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This title in other formats:Naked Airport: A Cultural History of the World's Most Revolutionary Structureby Alastair Gordon
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:Although airports are now best known for interminable waits at check-in counters, liquid restrictions for carry-on luggage, and humiliating shoe-removal rituals at security, they were once the backdrops for jet-setters who strutted, martinis in hand, through curvilinear terminals designed by Eero Saarinen. In the critically acclaimed Naked Airport, Alastair Gordon traces the cultural history of this defining institution from its origins in the muddy fields of flying machines to its frontline position in the struggle against international terrorism. From global politics to action movies to the daily commute, Gordon shows how the airport has changed our sense of time, distance, and style, and ultimately the way cities are built and business is done. He introduces the people who shaped and were shaped by this place of sudden transition: pilots like Charles Lindbergh, architects like Le Corbusier, and political figures like Fiorello LaGuardia and Adolf Hitler. Naked Airport is a profoundly original history of a long-neglected yet central component of modern life.
“This charming history documents why airports have always been such intriguing places. Gordon wittily deconstructs air terminal architecture. . . . Here is a book with more than enough quirky details to last a long layover.”—People
“[A] splendid cultural history.”—Atlantic Monthly
“Gordon, an architecture and design critic, tells his story well, bringing to life some of the main characters and highlighting some of the important issues concerning urbanism and airports.”—Michael Roth, San Francisco Chronicle
“Gordon provides a truly compelling account of how airports had over the course of three-quarters of a century become the locus of not only modern dreams but postmodern nightmares as well. Don’t leave home without it.”—Terence Riley, director of the Miami Art Museum
Review:"Gordons compelling narrative shows how architecture is bound up with the rest of the world in a way that architectural histories too rarely do."--The Architects Newspaper Review:"A fascinating and accessible survey of airport design."--Architecture Boston Review:"This charming history documents why airports have always been such intriguing places. Gordon wittily deconstructs air terminal architecture. . . . Here is a book with more than enough quirky details to last a long layover."-People Review:"An epic story."--The Boston Globe Review:"Naked Airport is as exhilarating as it is literate and informative."--John Berendt, author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil Review:" Gordons lively history [is written] with an eclectic range of reference and an eye for detail . . . smoothly blending cultural and aesthetic history."--Publishers Weekly Review:"Gordons prose is deft and witty. . . . Naked Airport elegantly traces the development of air travel by positioning the airport as a metaphor for our relationship to history and the rest of the world, capturing both the excitement and the anxiety of modern flight."--MSNBC Review:"Brilliant."--New Statesman Review:"Splendid perspective."--Desert Morning News Review:"Alastair Gordons breezy, engaging new book Naked Airport . . . ingeniously traces the development of airport architecture."--The New York Observer Review:"An important and engaging look at airports as typology."--Frame Magazine Synopsis:The first full cultural history of the ultimate modern structure: the airport, revealed as never before Since its origins in the muddy fields of flying machines, the airport has arguably become one of the defining institutions of modern life. In Naked Airport, critic Alastair Gordon ranges from global geopolitics to action movies to the daily commute, showing how airports have changed our sense of time, distance, style, and even the way cities are built and business is done. Gordon introduces the people who shaped this place of sudden transition: pilots like Charles Lindberg, architects like Eero Saarinen, politicians like Fiorello La Guardia, and Hitler, who built Berlin' s Tempelhof as a showcase for Fascist power. He describes the airport' s futuristic contributions, such as credit cards, in the form of fly-now-pay-later schemes, and he charts its shift in popular perception, from glamorous to infuriating. Finally, he analyzes the airport' s function in war and peace-- its gatekeeper role controlling immigration, its appeal to revolutionaries since the hijackings of the 1960s, and its new frontline position in the struggle against terror. Compelling and accessible, Naked Airport is an original history of a long-neglected yet central creation of modern reality and imagination. About the AuthorAlastair Gordon is a critic, curator, and contributing writer to the New York Times and writes regularly for Architectural Digest, Town & Country, and Dwell. He is the author of several books including Weekend Utopia, Spaced Out, Beach Houses, and Romantic Modernist. What Our Readers Are SayingBe the first to add a comment for a chance to win!Product Details
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