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HAQLAHD OADT H0l0 ,¥. [ W ~ ASSOCIAa .S TOWN P LAI'I N Ul 3 Grounding the New Perspectives of Modernism: Canadian Airports and the Reconfiguration of the Cultural and Political Territory
eronautical technology supplied conceptual and opera A tional models as well as novel typologies for Modern Move ment design.' Its interconnections with commercial and state policy disclose the complicated structuration and displacement of Modernism within the modern project.' Each shared a preoc cupation with mobility and universality nonetheless grounded spatially. The airport building, initially denominated aerodrome, be came a figure for the late phase of modernity and the instru Fig. 1. Plan of Vancouver Airport and Seaplane Harbour, 1947; Harland Batholomew. mental use of science as well as an icon of the Modern Movement (Royal Architectural Institute of Canada {194 7J , 326) endeavour to redirect that generally hierarchical and colonial practice to more equitable and humane social ends. The conver gence of such diametrically opposed agendas in aeronautical technology and architecture is exemplified in a 1947 proposal for a land and sea plane airport on a reclaimed section of English Bay, close to downtown Vancouver (fig. 1). That was included in the revised version of the City Beautiful plan drawn up by the United States firm of Harland and Bartholomew and published in the July 1940 edition of the Journal of the Royal Architectural In stitute of Canada. Their theory of design and technology diverged from the radical functionalism espoused by the majority of de signers involved in the construction of Vancouver's first airport building, including the structurally innovative reinforced con Rhodri Windsor-Liscombe, F.S.A. , wrrmtly chairs the Department of Art crete aircraft hangar conceived by the architect-engineer Otto History and the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program at the University of Safir in 1955' (fig. 2). The spatial grounding of cultural change is British Columbia. A graduate of the Courtau/d Institute of Art, he previously especially evident in later 2oth century Canada as it moved from taught at London and McGill Un ivers ities. His major publications include imperial confederation to cosmopolitan constitutional independ William Wilkin s 1778-1 839 (Cambridge, 1980)-revisited in The Age of ence.' Moreover, during that period, Canadian scholars made Wilkin s. Th e Architectu re of Improvement (with David Watkin , Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Mu seum, 2000); Fran cis Rat ten bury and British Columbia: Ar significant contributions to the theorization of the spatial and chitecture and Challenge in the fmp erial Age (with A. Barrett, UBC, 1983), socio-cultural impact of new communication systems and tech "Altogether American :" Robert Mills Architect and Engineer (Oxfo rd, 1994); nologies. and "The New Spirit." Modern Architecture in Vancouver 1938- 1963 (Cana In those processes, Modernist design, typified in the federal dia n Centre fo r A rchitecture and M.l. T., 1997). His w rrent research on in airport building program of the mid-1950s, acted as iconic and tersections between Modern Movemen t architecture and late British functional agent of supposedly tmifying but ultimately contest Imperialism was awarded a fohn Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. ed collective identity. Yet the often mundane rather than elegant abstract functional articulation of the Canadian federal airports, generally bereft of the "whammo" stylistic formalism of some ISSAC I JS EAC 28, n" 1, 2 (2003) ; 3-14.
3 JSSAC I JSEAC 28. n ~ 1. 2 C2003l
Fig. 2. Vancouver International Airport, View of CP Air Hangar, 1955; Otto Safir. (Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, 35 . 4 (1958] , 33)
Fig. 3. Map Canada: 2oth century Geographic Scope of Liberalization for Air Transportation. 1984. (New Canadian Air Policy, 1984)
United States (and most recent airports), both simulate and chal lenge the stereotypical binaries within the Modernist-Postmod ernist debate.' They display a bland transparency and efficiency that, on the one hand, seems to illustrate Martin Heidegger's def inition of the modern condition: "Everything gets lumped to gether into uniform distanceless" and "despite all conquest of distances the nearness of things remains absent."• On the other hand, they act as containers of heightened societal and individ ual instability consequent upon air travel, which yet concretise a liminal arena somewhat equivalent to Homi Bhabha's third space.' Indeed, from the late 1950s and the successful introduc tion of jet passenger aircraft, airports have become places of rit prominence. The first transatlantic flight by Alcock and Brown in ualistic transposition across geophysical no less than 1919 began from Newfoundland (within forty years fully inte ethno-cultural boundaries, despite the capitalist-consumerist grated into Confederation) using an adapted Vickers heavy trappings of mass tourism and economic migration. Their Mod bomber named in celebration of the famed Canadian capture in ernist fabrics demonstrate the heterogeneous ideology of the 1917 of Vimy [Ridge]. 13 A few months earlier the Dominion Gov Movement, intermixing locality with intercontinentalism, high ernment had signed both the Versailles Treaty and the 1919 In with popular culture and technology with aesthetic." That last in ternational Convention for Air Navigation, itself preceding the termixture is exemplified in the Canadian context by the artwork first trans-Canada flight, 7•h to 17•h October 1920." The federal fi commissioned for the new federal airports and, most notably, nancing of policy for the new technology thus anticipated the B.C. Binning's mural for the Edmonton Airport (1958-1961).9 In formalization of Canada's diplomatic autonomy at the 1926 Im addition, the Modernist airport enforced the confusion, even perial Conference. While aerial transport was then regarded by contamination of social classes at all the significant regulatory British and Canadian imperialists as promising a revitalized im spaces of air travel and most especially pre-boarding, customs, perium surpassing its maritime-commercial origins-witness the and luggage areas.10 Besides thus anticipating attributes of the rhetoric surrounding the reception at Montreal of the inaugural postmodern condition, the spatial anonymity of the first series of transatlantic flight by the R100 airship in 1930 or the 1935 postwar Canadian (and international) airports embodied Mod transatlantic flying boat service agreement signed in Ottawa be ernism's original intent to disrupt the hierarchical controlling tween the United Kingdom (Imperial Airways), the United systems of modernity. They made conspicuously efficient rather States (Pan American Airways), and Canada-independence in than impressive places that corresponded with Marshall air policy was guarded by the Federal Government." McLuhan's optimistically technocratic Global Village. In turn, In 1937, just before the attempted inauguration of Imperial those symbolically neutral spaces would accommodate the · Airways transatlantic service, C. D. Howe, the Minister of Trans emergent late modern intersubjectivity regarded as potentially port, won parliamentary approval for the Trans-Canada Airlines benign by Pico Iyer in the Global Soul.'' Bill "of immense value for national purposes"'• (figs. 4 and 5). The radically altered comprehension of space, and thereby The eventual commencement of service in 1939 was inscribed place and form in the architectural sense, instilled by air travel is into Canadian progressive no less than popular culture through manifest in the total re-mapping of Canada to define the "Geo advertising. One example is the advertisement placed in the June graphic Scope of Liberalization" formulated by the 1984 federal 1939 issue of the JRAicl7 in which text and image played upon Air Policy" (fig. 3). Geography, society, commerce, technique and both imperialist and universalist narrative (fig. 6). From 1939 aesthetic were similarly redefined by the advent of aerial infra Canada supplied, as before and during the First World War, dis structure. In the establishment of those generally invisible yet proportionate numbers of airforce personnel, airfields for the materially tangible lines of air transportation, and in the related Commonwealth Air Training Programme (CATC) and safe development of air power, Canada assumed considerable haven for substantial aircraft manufacture. That included the De
4 Fig. 5. Lockheed 12-a CF-CCT. Vancouver, End of transcontinental flight, July 29. 1937. (McGrath Htstory of Canad1an Airports_ Toronto: lug us. 1992. 202)
Fig. 4. C.D. Howe, Minister of Transport. and crew. Vancouver, July 29. 1937. (McGrath. History of Canad1an Airports. Toronto: Lugus, 1992. 203)
the late modern globalized "network of places" constructed by those multifarious dynamics Heidegger justifiably attributed to "the logic of capitalist development."'" There is another dimension to those restructurations, a di mension closer to the processes of internationalisation and of ar chitectural design. The paradigmatic images of Modern Movement reformed urbanism are almost always represented as if from an aerial perspective, one more technically authentic than the traditional "bird's-eye view." Moreover, these either include provision for air transport or allude to its civil or military agency." Tony Garnier's cite industrielle was drawn concurrently Haviland Mosquito fighter-bomber, and the A.V. Roe (AVRO) with the Wright Brother's pioneering flights at Kitty Hawk Lancaster heavy bomber, which became mainstays of the later (1903-1905). Clearly, the aerial perspective was not his invention, stages of the European air war; in addition, a modified version of but it is employed to support a more insistent concept of physi the Lancaster initiated Trans-Canada Airways transatlantic serv cal and communal relationship that became normalized with the ice in 1943. Each company subsequently contributed to inde advent of regular flight. In that respect, the air trope operates pendent nationalist policy. De Haviland manufactured the akin to the idealized utopian project of comprehensive town Beaver bush plane, which assisted the resource development planning. Each simultaneously confronted real deficiencies generated by postwar Reconstruction, and AVRO, the now while delineating solutions increasingly capable of implementa mythic Arrow supersonic fight-bomber, which initially placed tion through the technologies glamourized in aircraft. Hence the Canadian aeronautical technology at the forefront of internation compounding contraction between the imaginary and attainable al development. 18 in Sant Elia's confluence of aerial and ground transportation sys The link betvveen what the MacKenzie King Liberal Gov tem in the Citta Nuova (c. 1912-1914), or Le Corbusier's Con ernment called "Canadianism" and the emergent aerial world temporary City plan for Paris (1920-1922), which was order had been manifested in the grounding of the bureaucratic subsequently named for the French aircraft manufacturer Voisin. machinery for the 1944 International Air Services Transit Agree In the same way, the technophilia cherished by most proponents ment in Montreal; appropriately the International Civil Aviation of the Modern Movement design led Richard Neutra in his Rush Organization and International Air Transport Association remain City scheme (1924-1926) to de-problematize the impact of the au headquartered in a Modernist skyscraping tower block on Sher tomobile on urban community, partly by situating the visual brooke Street. Despite, or due to, recent collaboration through locus and thereby the predominant mental frame aerially." The the 1939-1945 conflict, Canada in 1944 spurned British attempts everyday experience of flying supported such removal of the to forge a Commonwealth Air Policy constructed around British complex material contingency of city living to an abstract and controlled aircraft manufacture and economic interests.'• aesthetically appealing mechanistic imagery. Le Corbusier fur Nonetheless, Trans Canada Airlines and Canadian Pacific Air thered that conflicted vision of humanizing technology in the lines (actually formed earlier than T.C.A. in 1930) bought British Ville Verte and Radiant City plans (1930-1935). One sheet of ele aircraft, notably the Vickers Viscount and Bristol Britannia. The vations even claimed the invincibility of reinforced concrete Viscount and Britannia respectively enabled daily cross-conti apartments against aerial bombardment" (fig 6). The strict or nental transit and the first transpolar flights out of Vancouver thogonal disposition of residential, manufacturing, commercial, from 1955; C.P.A. and T.C.A. also planned on flying the pure jet transit, and recreational facility in that benign disruption of De Haviland Comet that opened rapid transcontinental travel in modernity would be displaced by his second visit to Rio de 1952. The jet era would, moreover, reposition Canada centrally in Janeiro. In 1929, he flew aboard the Zeppelin airship to South
5 JSSAC I JSEAC 28. n ~ 1. 2 <20031
Fig . 6. Aerial Warefare, Radiant City, 1930; Le Corbusier. ''U (Le Corbusier. La ville rad1euse. Paris : Vincent. 1964 (1933), 171 )
America. He experienced the visual \~ integration of large-scale geography . I with human settlement, and simulta 1 r-.- ·· j • ._ .. _;.:)'] \ '\ ~)~ ' neous visibility of site and situation, [rl -.--:f.-.. - :-::-u more than likely prompted the inte :-,~,11' --) ' l .I ' gration of topography and even the ' . ·~ :______/:_ __ ]! I ~ ------.,.,· ·_;I Picturesque into his subsequent \ ~: town planning schemes especially for Algiers." In company with Frank Lloyd Wright, whose 1930 perspec tive rendering for the Grouped Tow ers project in Chicago includes a Zeppelin-like dirigible, Le Corbusier regarded advanced aircraft as visual symbols and actual models of the social potential of technical system notably in its 1935 book Aircraft. 25 That justifying and expository role is evident in the au togyro transport ("Aero tors") Wright conceived for Broadacre City (1934-1935), or within a divergent political context, the airview rendering, including the latest Fiat bombers, of a scheme for the Palazzo Littorio, entered in the 1934 competition for a new Fascist headquarters in Rome by a group including Luigi Figini and Ernesto Rogers.'• It also underlines the polemic intent of the illustration of a Short Kent Flying Boat operated by Impe rial Airways in F.R.S. Yorke's important Modernist tract, Tire Modern Hou se (1936); or of Le Corbusier's decision to suspend a full-size model monoplane in the Bata Pavilion at the 1937 Paris World's Exposition as an allegory for global commerce." The Modernist argument from the air almost attained durable form in Raymond McGrath's design for Rudderbar (1934)'" (fig. 7). An aviatrix commissioned him to design a com bined house and transport hub. An aircraft hangar and a garage were to be built alongside domestic quarters surmounted by an observation/ control tower. Building was to have commenced with the patron dropping a foundation block after takeoff at the onset of an attempt on the flight endurance record to be termi nated coincident with the completed structure. A less arcane al liance of Modernist practice and theory with aeronautics occurred in 1947. That formed part of the endeavours to revive the Congres internationaux de !'architecture moderne (ClAM) and its centrality to Modernist design and urbanism. The dele gates to the 6•h ClAM at Bridgewater in the West of England, in cluding the young Canadian architect-planner H. Peter Oberlander representing Central [Canada] Mortgage and Hous Fig. 7. Rudderbar, Hanworth Airplane Field, Feltham. View of the South-east and air-view of 29 the runway to the airplane house, 1932; Raymond McGrath (London) ing Corporation, visited the Bristol Aeroplane Company (McGrath. Twentieth-Century Houses. London: Faber and Faber. 1934 . 22) (fig. 8). At the company's factory in Filton, they observed the mass-production of prefabricated housing units using surplus
6 RHODRI WINDSOR LISCOMBE IAI~I.!l ..~:I'I!I~IAI··~I:l
Fig. 9. Prefabricated Houses, Production at the Bristol Aeroplane Company, 1946. (File Types . Royal Institute of British Architects (1945-461. 403)
Fig. B. ClAM VI. Bridgwater, 1947. Meeting at Bristol Aeroplane Compan y. (Gold. The expenence of modernism . modern architects and the future city. 1928·53. london : E & F N Spon, 1997, 8.7)
military material, especially aluminium and steel: a functioning metaphor for Modernism's ideal of reconstructing society by redirecting industrialist and technology to universal human need (fig. 9) . Yet-and symptomatic of the limited analytic and of the conservative collusions of Modernism- the chief concurrent productions of the Bristol Aeroplane Company were high-per formance sports cars, gas turbine engines, and freight and pas senger aircrafts. Of these latter, the Brabizon airliner was aimed at the elite transatlantic traveler"' (fig. 10). A later project would be the engines for the Concorde, which originated at the Royal Aircraft Establishment as a vehicle for rapid travel to the distant Commonwealth, with the objective of maintaining British transoceanic economic influence. That imbrication of the radical with the traditional in Mod ernism applies to the establishment of the Canadian air transport system and airline industry. The bureaucratic model and com mercial impetus derived from Canadian railway policy and com panies with their heritage of imperial, neo-colonial and expansionist praxis. 31 As indicated, the national legislation, be ginning with the 1919 Air Board Act, emerged out of the agree ment signed by the British Empire with its allies as part of the Versailles Treaty. The Act, again paralleling Modernist attempts to exploit the latest technology in the enactment of ethos, was "for the regulation of a service essentially important in itself as touching closely the national life and interests but also of the ne cessity of making provision for performing the obligations of Canada, in part of the British Empire and the Convention relat Fig. 10. Aviation. the Bristol Brabazon, 1949. (Graves. Achievements. Land Sea and Air: A Century of Conquest. London : Bloombury Publishing, 1998, 127) ing to the regulation of Aerial Navigation[ .. . ] signed by the rep resentatives of 21 of the Allied and Associated Powers including Canada."" Reading such contemporary policy documents back processes charted by one Canadian theorist of social-cultural de into Modernism underscores the formative dynamic of the First velopment, Harold Innis.'' Those assumptions also engage with World War in collectivizing disparate groups and ideology the technophilia celebrated by McLuhan, who comprehended around more universalizing projects. The assumptions the profound realignments of physical and psychological space underlying the 1919 Act also resonate with those material wrought by the technologies of the Jet Age. J.I Just as McLuhan's
7 JSSAC I JSEAC 28. n ~ 1. 2 <2003l
Fig. 11 . Ottawa, International Airport. General View of Building, showing main entrance; Gille land and Strutt, 1960. (Royal Architectural lnstttute of Canada, 37 , 12 [1960]. 510)
centres, causing a contributor to Saturday Night as late as 1958 to describe Canadian aerodromes as "undoubtedly among the world's worst."l6 Consequently, they were not an irritant pres ence of distant disciplining authority in the Foucauldian sense. 8 RHODRI WINDSOR USCOMBE r..Wr!1o:!:lrl!1~!\••t:~t;J Fig. 14. Winnipeg , International Airport , pl an and drawin g. 1960: Green and Blankstein, Russell , et al. , (The Canadian Architect. 06 [1960], 70) Fig . 12. Halifax. International Airport, General View. External views. 1960: Gilleland and Strutt. (Royal Architectural Institute of Canada. 37, 12 [1960], 516) Vir"'' of .fpt'CIU /Qr .f' drclt from tarmac WINNIPEG INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT T) ... "' ' Jl.tr.tt~· luudiuu~ ol P·"M'tllJ.t'r l!.utdlitt!o( :md .tit pl .• m· l~ lt • tr<>l rt·~uht~l m l\\u m.IJ••r huildi 1 1~~. 11ludt .trl' Lto}t : admini.nrmiw: wing und an:l•ih.:dumll~ rc•\.ttl'•J ~~~ .1 ,,,mmutt control towt'r from wrm(K Ill' t,l , Of I.'UIIIp (', I( li_IL ~ ~ ,Ul'( 'w m.uro lloor IL'It•l b uuintc•n1tpted tlort>UJ.thnlll . The flnt )I,H.!t' urfc·rs the· _c:.lll' pr._~itiuu' . u.)<'tl fur iuh•n>.~li111ml .u 1 rebuilding of Toronto's facility at Malton followed at the end of the decade in grudging recognition of the transfer of financial paramountcy from Montreal. The two other cities at the centre of new regional economies then altering the Canadian political fab ric, Vancouver and Calgary, enlarged their airports predomi nantly under civic plebiscite. The DOT, however, had exclusive authority for the remainder that fulfilled older Canadian politi cal agendas of the distribution of subsidiary economic power: Comox, Edmonton, Kenora, North Ba y, Prince Rupert, Port Hardy, Regina, Saskatoon, St. John's, Sept-iles, Sault-Sainte Marie, Stephenville, Quebec City, Victoria, and Windsor. Their construction should also be linked to a substantial military pro gramme motivated by the Cold War together with the strategic and neo-colonialist appropriation of the North. Another factor was realignment away from Britain, after the 1956 Suez Crisis, toward closer but problematic alliance with the United States as Fig . 13. Montreal, International Airport, General View, 1960: lllsey, Templeton , Archibald. enacted by NORAD (North American Aerospace Defence Com (Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, 37, 12 [1960]. 518) mand), and cancellation of the AVRO Arrow in favour of the So marc missile." The defining architectural characteristic of Canadian air port building from that era is a cautious internationalism, vec tored toward the United States consumerist and mechanistic 9 JSSAC I JSEAC 28. nM 1. 2 <2003) Fig . 15. Vancouver, Vancouver International Airport, exterior. Main entrance, McCarter and Nairne (The Canadian Archttect, 01 [1959}, 47) Fig . 16. Calgary, Calgary Airport terminal, exterior. view of east side of building/observation area ; Clayton, Band and Mogridge. ( The Canadian Architect, 10 [1956], 36) re-appropriation of the Modern Movement. The design idiom at the different international and regional or local airports is re markably similar. That similarity derives to some extent from the functional specification but is here argued to represent a political inscription of the Modernist preoccupation with essentialized aesthetic as well as formal statement. The simplified trabeat ed-concrete, metal or wood-structure, standardized and modu lar in-fill / paneling or glass curtain walls, clear volumetric differentiation of functional operations, rigourous avoidance of ornamentation counteracted by contemporary artworks and fur nishing reflect both a policy of, and popular cultural preference for interconnectedness. The severe geometry could be monoto nous and diffused in Gilleland and Strutt's schemes for Halifax (1957-1960) (fig. 12) or for Ottawa (1955-1960, ironically delayed by the destruction of much of the glazing by the sonic boom from a low flying RCAF jet)." Conversely, it could be surreptitiously monumental as in the large, triple component facility designed for the Montreal International Airport at Dorval by lllsley, Tem pleton and Archibald working with Larose and Larose (1954- 1959)'1 (fig. 13). When less directly policed by W.A. Ramsay, Chief Architect at DOT, the typical Modernist formula was adapted with greater architectural distinction. It attained ele gance of proportion and of articulation in Green Blankstein Rus sell and Associates Winnipeg International Airport (1959-1961)" Fig. 17. Calgary, Calgary Municipal Airport, Interior. cafeteria ; Clayton. Band and Mogridge (fig. 14). There is even a hint of critical regionalism in the de (The Canadian Architect, 10 [1956], 37} ployment of glulam post-and-beam construction by McCarter Nairne and Partners for the temporary Air Terminal at Vancou and desirable future environment. The alliance of Modernist ver (1957-1958)" (fig. 15). Another factor was relative scale. The iconography and practice with the Quiet Revolution, as well as smaller traffic alike pertaining to Calgary allowed its architects, with growing regionalist and even ethnic consciousness, marked J.C. Clayton and Allan Mogridge, to introduce more domestic the extent of incommensurability coincidentally tolerated by spaces and effects (fig. 16). Those were reinforced by the com Modernism's egalitarian redirection of the modern project." The missioning of furnishings from Robin Bush who espoused the attainment of chiefly materialist objectives, embracing in Mod late Romantic humanist and craft veins also harboured within ernism both low cost public and private suburban housing, cor Modernist lore'" (fig. 17). responded with the functionalist specification of aeronautical That series of Canadian airports thus represents the broad architecture typified by John R. Baldwin's "Airports and Termi preference for greater cultural homogeneity and part of the nals in Canada" published in the October 1956 issue of The Cana search for a new political and economic synthesis. The Modernist dian Architect (TCAJ." Illustrated by aerial view renderings that design codes, while becoming increasingly conventionalized exaggerated aesthetic comparability, Baldwin read airports as at during that decade, still seemed capable of resolving different it tributes, operations, and problems: speed, access, noise, circula erations of the transformation of the customary into an efficient tion, and safety. In the review of Canadian airports TCA printed 10 RHODRI WINDSOR USCOMBE r!~r!ll"A:::t'l!1~r!lto·~t:~ Fig. 18. Toronto. Toronto International Airport , Windsor Airport drawing. (The Canadtan Arch ttect. 01 [1959]. 38) almost three years later (in January 1959), statistics pre dominated.'• The relapse into conformity was manifest in the cryptic allusion to growing Quebecois Separation in the caption on Dorval: "For a city of part French and part English, a collaborative of English and French architects brings the dichotomy right into the building." Modernism was still presumed capable of success fully reconfiguring traditional values or expectations through its concentration on analysis of need, efficiency of form, and embrace of technology. ""' The idea that aes thetic derived from satisfaction of function, baldly stated by Bruno Taut in Modem Architecture (1924), clearly influ enced the architectural critic James H. Acland as concerns the Toronto International Airport." He opined that the two inno vative "aeroquays" and new facilities for the jet age built at Mal ton to the designs of John B. Parkin Associates (1960-1964) surpassed all Canadian, and most American or European, air ter minals in architectural quality, technological relevance, and crit ical reception. The Parkin design team had invented a tmique structuration of Modernist mobility (fig. 18). The aeroquays com prised independent units that combined purist geometrical com position with a purposeful formal organization: the outer circular aircraft access and service building surrounding a cen tral rectangular parkade linked by tunnels beneath the flight apron to ground transportation communicating with Toronto and its economic region. Acland foresaw the inadequacy of Toronto's road and rail transit, but not the exponential growth in passenger traffic that would render the Malton solution obsolete. Thus he commended the complex as an "effective and presti gious monument" and a "stunning and admirable spatial and vi sual image [achieved] by concentration upon tightly knit Fig. 19. Toronto, Toronto International Airport, Exterior, view of aeroquay and plane at night, 1964; Parkin and Associates. circulation and care of passenger access." No other airport had (The Canadian Archttect, 02 {1 964). 47-4 8) "more effective interlock visually between the mechanism of flight and the public passenger areas." And "the puritanical and restrained detail of arrival and departure concourse" instilled an ric of many speeches delivered at the Symposium on the Future appropriate psychological ambience and context for artwork. of World Air Transport organized by the Montreal-based Inter That habit of mind where Modernism could negotiate social national Air Transport Association ca rried less conviction, espe and aesthetic consensus proved as transient as the arresting fixi cially in light of the deployment of United States air power in the ty of imagery in two illustrations to Acland's article. Both are Vietnam conflict. "The airplane," Alan Boyd of the U.S. Depart night photographs of the Toronto aeroquay: one shows a Vis ment of Transportation ironically declared, quoting President count airliner being prepared for a transcanadian flight, and the Lyndon B. Johnson, "has done most to bring individual peoples other the facility unencumbered by either aircraft or passengers" of the world together in friendship .. . [and] widespread (fig. 19). The technologies reified i11 the image would soon be understanding among people that banishes ignorance."'' The come obsolescent and contribute to the ruptures in universalist functions of architectural form include the successive redefini ethos that would outdate both the fabric and federalist message tion of those values and factors it is supposed to constitute of the late 1950s Canadian airports. By 1968, the positivist rheto- through construction. 11 JSSAC I JSEAC 28 , n ~ 1, 2 t2003l Fig . 20. Great Empire Flying Boat, Venus Boat co., 1939. (Royal Architecturaf Institute of Canada, 15, 4) GtA~T E~tPllll~ Fir·st of the Ath111~h ~ J?)eP• --···--- .. - I -:::.-~·:-.-:- I - ·~·, -:-·- -·...... -., ----...... --- - ~ - .... __ _ ~- .. - .... :-.. •:;.:---·-.... ···- THE EMPIRE FLYING-BOAT U A lllf H OW .(IN (j . Ullf J0 " IM I'IIII I A l AI ,.WAT\ h~t lll , N" , Harfol 1•- ,.., .,. Mto, l 4ft . "'""' 100 ,.. .. h ( • ..,...• ~ I . ~ . 114ft w .., ... 1\otly ...... ,..,, 1, I I ~- , ~ ..... t , A.u --..l- 14 ,..".,...... ,.'- ...,, >«I• -4 Uo- "' if'M .---1, Notes 169; and Klotz, Heinrich, 1988, The 5. Scully, Vincent, 1969, Ameri Spirit, 1985, Victoria, Art Gallery of HistonJ of Post Modem Architecture, can Architecture and Urbanism, Victoria; and Flaman, Bernard, 1. This paper ex tends research Cambridge Mass. M.I.T. Press. New York, Praeger, p. 198, with « The Airport as City Square » , on the intersection between later reference to Eero Saarinen's Trans paper presented at the 2000 British imperialism and Modern 3. For the European and British World Airways terminal at DOCOMOMO International Con Movement architecture and town training and early practice as well Idlewild, later John F. Kenned y ference, forthcoming in the Journal planning supported by grants as information on his Canadian Airport, New York, 1956-1962. of the Society for the Study of Archi from the Social Science and work, see Liscornbe, R. Windsor, tecture in Canada-JSSAC. Humanities Research Council of 1997, The New Spirit; Modern Archi 6. Martin Heidegger quoted by Canada and a John Simon tecture in Vancouver 1938-1963, David Harvey "From Space to 10. The vocabulary of contami Guggenheim Fellowship. Montreal and Vancouver, Canadi Place and back again", p. 10 in nation borrows from an analysis of an Centre for Architecture/Dou Bird, J, B. Curtis, T. Putnam et a/. more contemporary socio-cultural 2. The divergence between glas & Mclntyre/M.I.T. (eds.), 1993, Mapping the Futures: interchange both incommensu Modern Movement theory and Local Cultu res, Global Change, Lon rable and inevitable, resulting practice, and modernity and its 4. That period in Canadian his don, Routledge; see also from late modern conditions pre anticipation of postmodern affects tory is summarized in McNaught, Jameson, F., 1992, The geopolit ical sented by Fernando de Toro in the has been insuffici ently recognized Kenneth (rev. ed.), 1988, The Pen aesthetic. Cinema and space in the paper entitled << The Culture of in the major literature exemplified guin History of Canada, London, world system, Bloomington Ind., Displacement and the Question of by Harvey, David, 1989, The Condi Penguin, and examined by others: Indiana University Press. Identity >> delivered at Green Col tion of Post Modernitl{, Oxford, Bothwell, Robert (rev. ed.), 1989, lege, University of British Colum Oxford Universi ty Pr~ss; Haber Canada Since 1945: Power, Politics 7. Bhabha's, Homi, 1994, The and Provincialism, Toronto, Univer bia, 26 March 2002. mas, Jurgen, 1982, << Modern and Location of Culture, London, Rout sity of Toronto Press; Cohodos, Postmodern Architecture » , 9H, ledge. 11. McLuhan, Marshall, 1989, no. 4. p. 9-14; Heynen, Hilde, 1999, Robert, 1990, The Unmaki ng of 8. In addition to Heynen (1999), The Global Village: Transformations Architecture and Modernity, Cam Canada; the Hidden Theme in Cana see also Frampton, Kenneth, 1991 in World Life and Media in th e bridge, Mass., M.I.T. Press; Jame dian History Since 1945, Toronto, (rev. ed.), Modern Architectu re. A 21 '' Century, New York, O.U.P.; son, Fredric, 1991, Postmodernism, J. Lorimer; Creighton, Donald, Critical HistonJ, Toronto, Oxford Iyer, Pico, 2000, The Global So ul. Jet or the Cultural Logic of Late Capital 1976, Th e Forked Road: Canada 1939- University Press; and St. John Wil Lag, Shopping Malls and the Search ism, London, Verso, an important 1957, Toronto McClelland and son, Colin, 1995, The Other Tradi for Home, New York, Alfred A. section of which is reprinted in Stewart; and Granatstein, J.L., tion of Modern Architecture. The Knopf. See also Arefi, Mahyr, 1999, Leach, Neil (ed.), 1997, Rethinking 1986, Canada 1957-1967; the Years of Un completed Project, London, << Non-Place and Placelessness in Architect ure: A Reader in Cultural Un certainty and Inn ovation, Toron Academy Editions. Narratives of Loss - Rethinking to, McClelland and Stewart. the Notion of Place » , Joumal of Theory, London, Routledge, p. 128- 9. For Binning's Edmonton Urban Design, vol. 4, June, p. 2; mural, see B.C. Binning. A Classical Arefi, Mahyr, 1999, Citizen 12 Nowhere: The Search for Self in a 8, p. 502-504), in which the flight no. 1, p. 105-125. The abortive 25. Wright's scheme is illustrated Shifting World, New York, Alfred was described as giving "a great cooperative policy was proposed in Riley, Terence (ed.) 1994, Frank Knopf; Walker, Ruth, 2001, << Meet impetus towards the ultimate uni by Lord Halifax at the inaugural Lloyd Architect, New York, Muse the New Airport: Temple, Mall, ty of the Empire. While each meeting of the CATC prior to the um of Modern Art, p. 215. Cor Design Hub >> , Christian Science dominion has its own individual United Nations sponsored Inter busier's book Aircraft was pub Monitor, vol. 92, no. 23 August, problems, we all have one great national Civil Aviation Conference lished by the London journal The p. 189; and Pascoe, David, 2001, problem in common-the consoli in September at Chicago. Studio, reprinted 1988, New York, Airspaces, London, Reaktion. dation and growth of our Empire 20. Heidegger, quoted in Harvey Universe Books; the argument is 12. « New Canadian Air Policy >> , for the betterment of the world in (1993: 13). A positivist, regionalist summarized in the following sen 10 May 1984, pamphlet published Moral Health, in Mental Outlook view appears in Johns, B. (ed.), tences from the introduction by the then Minister of Transport, and in Physical Well-being." In 1995, Jet Dreams: Art of the Fifties in (p. 13), "The airplane, in the sky, Lloyd Axworthy, continuing the 1924, the journal had printed the Northwest, Seattle, University carries our hearts above mediocre "liberalization of airline regula Commander F.L.M. Boothby's arti of Washington Press. things. The airplane has given us cle "Airships for the Empire" with the birds-eye view. When the eye tion... [so as to) promote an 21. That idea was partially stated healthy, innovative and competi this warning: "Fail to get the air sees clearly, the mind makes a sense as we have the sea sense, fail by Charles Jencks with regard to clear decision." tive airline industry ... [leading to) Le Corbusier's town plans in 1973 to rear a race of airmen in the increase in domestic air travel and (Le Corbusier and the Tragic View of 26. Illustrated in Etlin, Richard, future as we reared a race of sea industry's new competitive Architecture, London, Allen Lane, 1991, Modernism in Italian Architec men ... and the British Empire will advantage in the international p. 125). See also Gutkind, E.A., ture, 1890-1940, Cambridge, Mass., crumble at the challenge of the forum" (p. 1), and to "promote 1952, Our World From the Air, New M.I.T. Press, figure 273 on p. 731. national integration through first nation capable of defeating us Among other valuable references, in this new element" (vol. 15, no. 3, York, Doubleday; and Pascoe, increased domestic air travel" David, 2001, Airspaces, London, Etlin notes the propagandist sig p. 154-165). (p. 5). See also Sealy, K.R., 1957, Reaktion. nificance of the transatlantic flight Geography of Air Transport, London, 16. Hughes, William, 1961, Public by the Fascist Airforce to the 1932 22. Hines, Thomas, 1982, Richard Hutchinson; and for the socially Policy and Airline competition in Chicago International Exposition, Neutra and the Search for Modern ordering power of such infrastruc Canada, doctoral thesis, Indiana A Century of Progress, esp. p. xxii. Architecture, New York, Oxford ture, Starr, Susan L., 1999, Sorting University, p. 99. University Press. 27. Respectively, Yorke, F.R.S. Things Out. Classification and Its 17. Journal of the Royal Architec (1944 ed.), Modern House, London, 23. Illustrated in the 1937 Eng Consequences, Cambridge, Mass., tural Institute of Canada. Architectural Press (p. 9) above lish translation of his 1935 La Ville M.I.T. Press. text defining the watchword of 18. Rossiter, Sean, 1990, Legends Radieuse, The Radiant City, London, 13. Smith, H. Gibbs (2nd ed.) "Modern" architecture "new func of the Air: Aircraft, Pilots and Plane Faber and Faber, p. 171. The 1985, Aviation: An Historical Survey tional plan," and illustrated in makers, Seattle, Sasquatch Books; chiefly military aspect of aircraft from its Origins to the End of World Tafuri, Manfredo, 1968, Teorie e sto and Rossiter, Sean, 1999, The development had become a signif War II, London, Her Majesty's Sta ria del 'architettura, Bari, Laterza, Immortal Beaver, Vancouver, Dou icant aspect in fictional literature tionery Office. p. 113 and reproduced by glas & Mcintyre. The Arrow inci well before the Spanish Civil War 14. The early legislature history dent is reviewed in Dow, James, Tournikiotis, T., 1999, The Histori (1935-1937) exemplified by Wells, ography of Modern Architecture, is reviewed in the pamphlet pub 1979, The Arrow, Toronto, H.G., 1898, The War of the Worlds; Cambridge, Mass., M.I.T. Press lished by the federal Attorney J. Lorimer; and Stewart, Greig, and Warner, Rex, 1944, The Aero (p. 196). General as In the Supreme court of 1988, Shutting Down the National drome; see also Beer, Gillian, 1990, Canada. In the matter of a Reference Dream: A. V.Roe and the Tragedy of « The island and the aeroplane: the 28. McGrath, 1932, Twentieth As to the Respective Legislative Pow the Avro Arrow, Scarborough, case of Virginia Wolf >> , in Bhabha, Century Houses, London, ers ... of the Parliament of Canada and Ontario, McGraw-Hill Ryerson. It Horni (ed.), Nation and Narration , example 22, p. 87-88. the Legislatures of the Provinces in also was the subject of a 1998 fea London, Routledge p. 265-290. 29. Gold, John R., 1997, The Expe Relation to their Regulation and Con ture film produced by the Canadi 24. Loach, Judy (ed.), 1987, Le rience of Modernism. Modern Archi trol of Aeronautics, Ottawa, Gov an Broadcasting Corporation and tects and the Future City 1928-1953, ernment Printer, 1929. National Film Board. Corbusier: Architect of the Century, London [Hayward Gallery) Arts London, E. & F.N. Spon, p. 202, 15. The luncheon organized by 19. MacKenzie, David, 1993, Council of Great Britain; Curtis, fig. 8.7. the Montreal Royal Empire Society « The Rise and Fall of the Com William, 1995, Le Corbusier: Ideas 30. A photograph of the inaugu to celebrate the arrival of the RlOO, monwealth Air Transport Council. and Forms, London, Phaidon; and ral test flight of the Brabizon and presided over by Lord A Canadian Perspective >> , The Perez Oyarzun, Fernando, 2000, Le appears in Graves, Richard, 1998, Shaughnessy, was reported in 1930 Journal of Imperial and Common Corbusier in South America, Depart Achievements. Land Sea & Air: A in the United Empire (vol. 21, no. wealth History, January, vol. 21, ment of History, Cambridge Uni Century of Conquest, London, versity, October. Bloomsbury Publishing, p. 127; see 13 JSSAC I JSEAC 28, n " 1. 2 C2003l also Graves, Richard, 1953, T/1 e /C, April, vol. 33, no. 4, p. 110-11 7. midst, is the functional beautiful 51. 1924, Modern Architecture, Wonder Book of Aircraft, London, There are some references in Vancouver International Airport." London, Architectural Press, p. 9 Ward Lock, p. 64, 72-73, and 75. Kalman, Harold, 1994, A History of 44. 1960, TCA, June, vol. 5, no. 6, Introduction; James H. Acland's 31. Grose, Fred P., 1955, The Air Canadian Architecture, Toronto, p. 69-71, comparing its design review in 1964, TCA , February, Tmn sporf Board and the Reg ulation Oxford University Press, esp . with the work of Mies van der vol. 9, no. 2, p. 41-44, citing of Co nnnercial Air Services, M .A. vol. 2. See also Zukowsky, John, Rohe, Skidmore Owings, and Mer Stephen Spender's poem The Land Thesis, Carleton College, Ottawa. and Koos Bosma, 1996, Building for rill and J.B. Parkin and Associates, scape Near an Aerodrome and Air Tmvel: Architecture and Design remarking on the manner in which 32. In the Supre111 e Court ... (op. and commending the fact that, for Co uunercial Aviation, the "monumental hall is second cit. ). "The main floor level is uninter Munich/New York, Prestel; and rupted throughout" (p. 70). ary to the movement of people, 33. Innis's major work is: 1951 , Binney, Marcus, 1999, Airports baggage service trucks and peo 45. 1959, TCA, July vol. 4, no. 7, The Bias ofConununication, Toronto, Builders, London, Academy Edi ple." Acland also compared the p . 41-47. The idea of critical University of Toronto Press. ti ons, mainly reviewing recent Malton facilities fa vourably with regionalism within later Mod 34. Notably in 1951 , The Mechan international airport architecture Saarinen's T.W.A. Terminal and ernist practice was argued by ical Bride: Folklore of Indu strial Man, but noting how air terminals are Charles Luckman's Los Angeles Frampton, Kenneth, 1983, New York, Vanguard Press; or "key national construction projects terminal (1958-1959). In that << Towards a Critical Regionalism: 1967, The Medium is the Message, around the world," p. 9. regard, the following statement in Six Points for an Architecture of New York, Bantam Books. a report on the opening of the new 41. See note 3, and Haydon, Resistance » , in Foster, Hal (ed.), McLuhan's thought and influence Vancouver terminal in April 1996 Peter, 1993, Th e 1962 Cuba11 Missile The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Posf is examined in Cavell, Richard, in the Province is interesting: "It's Crisis: Canadian lnvolvelnenf Reco /1- III Odern Culture, London, Pluto 2002, McLulwn in Space: a Cullum/ a Canadian experience, instead of sidered, Toronto, Canadian Insti Press, p. 16-30. Geogmphy, Toronto, University of tute of Strategic Studies. passing through a 'junkyard' of Toronto Press, which also includes 46. 1956, TCA, October vol. 5, unfathomable modern art." 42. 1960, << Three International analyses of Innis and of the differ no. 10, p. 38-39. Air Terminals '', jRAIC, December, 52. The phrase "habit of mind," ent spatial framing of Canadian 47. Leclere, D., 1992, The Crisis of vol. 37, no. 12, p. 509-526. and its implied inclusion of subjec identity by Northrop Frye. Abstmctio11 in Canada: The 1950s, tive convention with rational cog 43. The JRAIC (December 1960) 35. In tl1e Supreme Court ... (op. Ottawa, National Gallery of Cana nition, derives from Margolis, article noted the "monumental cit.); interestingly with regard to da. Howard, 1993, Paradigms and Bar staircase" in the main building the universalizing role within the 48. 1956, TCA, October, vol. 1, riers: How Habits of Mind Govern which had "the great dining room Modern Movement project, and no. 10, p. 30-36. Scientific Beliefs, Chicago, Universi and bar," providing a grand space international transportation, Sec ty of Chicago Press. to observe the spectacle of air 49. 1959, TCA , January, vol. 4, tion Ill (p. 85) sets out a "Universal transportation and "a luxury suite no. 1, p. 32-40; the Department of 53. 1968, Aviation's Role in Future system of Ground Marks." with bar and dining room," which Transport then estimated an Tran sportation . A Symposium on the 36. Quoted in: 1959, << Canadian once again sounded the underly expenditure of approximately Future of World Air Transport, Airports. A Review >>, The Canadian ing symbolic political purpose: $600 million in airport facilities by Munich, p. 94. Arcl1itect, vol. 4 January p. 32-40; "Where hospitality can be extend 1968. see also p. 33, the source for the ed to important visitors entering 50. Exemplified by Siegfrid press reports cited below in the or leaving Canada" (p. 518). That Giedion, 1948, Mechanisa tion Takes text. theme also recurred with regard to Command: A Contribution to Anony 37. Hughes : 99. the innovative luggage conveyor IIIOus History, New York, Oxford 38. Grose : 45. belt and carousel system, which University Press. had "attracted the attention of our 39. Hughes : 1. American friends who are consid 40. The main documentary ering using it for their Washington resource remains articles in TCA [D.C.] air terminal [Eero Sarrinen, and the joumal of the Royal Archi 1958-61]. " See also 1968, Info the jet fectumllnsfifufe ofCmwda URA IC) , Age, Ottawa, Department of Air beginning with an historical Transport, on the Vancouver air review together with an analysis port as extended and rebuilt by of technica l requirements written Tho mpson Berwick Pratt and by Ramsay, W.A., 1956, << Air Ter Associates commending its superb minal Buildings in Canada>>, JRA- topographical setting: "And in the 14