The Role of Elevated Views

Man and His World: The Role of Elevated Views

By Kelly Anne Caulfield For Professor Annmarie Adams T.A. Olivier Vallerand ARCH 355 History of Architecture IV March 2010

The USSR and Thailand Pavilions at Night, with Twinkling Lights to Draw Visitors

Thank you: To Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and Roland Barthes for writing the works of literature that inspired this essay. To Meredith Dixon for his meticulous documentation of Expo through photography. To Professor Annmarie Adams and Carol Anne Caulfield for assistance in editing.

Planners took the theme of the 1967 International and Universal Exposition (“Expo”) in

Montreal, ‘Terre des Hommes’, from the novel of the same name by celebrated French writer and pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. In Saint-Exupéry’s ‘Terre des Hommes’, he eloquently portrays the sensation of flight through his musings on the human condition from the point of view of a young pilot in the 1920’s. His written ideas express the ability of new technology –

Saint-Exupéry’s airplane – and the aerial viewpoint to enable users to understand their own environment.

Pairing a bird’s-eye view and world expositions is not a new concept. The best known example is the Eiffel Tower. The Eiffel Tower was constructed for the 1889 World’s Fair in

Paris and served as an entrance arch way. Visitors also took a lift to the top of the thousand foot

(324 m) high iron structure to take in a panoramic view of Paris.1 In his essay entitled ‘The

Eiffel Tower’, French philosopher and critic Roland Barthes examines the significance and

attraction of this panoramic view.

Both Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s plane and the Eiffel Tower provided new views of their

surrounding environments. At Expo ‘67, this desire to see an environment from an elevated

viewing point was satisfied by the Minirail. This personal enlightenment enabled by the elevated

views, as described in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s early experiences of flight and Roland

Barthes’ essay on the significance of the Eiffel Tower, serves as a precedent against which we

can analyze the experience of Expo ‘67’s elevated Minirail.

Saint-Exupéry’s novel ‘Terre des Hommes’, translated in English as ‘Wind, Sand and

Stars’, presents an in-depth examination of the connection between perspective and

understanding one’s environment. On a superficial level, the novel relates the life of a young

pilot and the challenges he faces flying primitive airplanes on postal routes across South

1 Barthes, 2.

America, Europe and Africa. However his anecdotes also contain philosophical reflections relating to the human condition, namely what it means to be human and how our reactions to the events in our lives define us.

Saint-Exupéry’s creative expressions

of the human desire to interact caught the

attention of Expo planners and eventually

served as the theme for the exposition.

Specifically, influential French-Canadian

author Gabrielle Roy is credited with

suggesting Saint-Exupéry’s ‘Terre des

Hommes’ as a theme.2 In a publication by the

Canadian Corporation for the 1967 World

Exhibition, Roy states,

“In Terre des Hommes, his haunting book, so

filled with dreams and hopes for the future,

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry writes of how deeply moved he was when, flying for the first time by night alone over Argentina, he happened to notice a few flickering lights scattered below him across an almost empty plain. They "twinkled here and there, alone like stars." ...In truth, being made aware of our own solitude can give us insight into the solitude of others. It can even cause us to gravitate towards one another as if to lessen our distress. Without this inevitable solitude, would there be any fusion at all, any tenderness between human beings. Moved as he was by a heightened awareness of the solitude of all creation and by the human need for solidarity, Saint-

2 Faber, Roy et al. Image: Saint-Exupéry in flight.

Exupéry found a phrase to express his anguish and his hope that was as simple as it was rich in

meaning; and because that phrase was chosen many years later to be the governing idea of Expo

67, a group of people from all walks of life was invited by the Corporation to reflect upon it and

to see how it could be given tangible form.”3

This idea of drawing people out of their personal and cultural solitude and celebrating the

common threads of humanity, as well as the differences, are fundamental elements of a world

exposition.

Both Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s view from his airplane and the view of the Eiffel Tower acted as a human connection. Similar to Saint-Exupéry’s twinkling lights in Argentina, Barthes remarks that even as he sits writing his essay he can see “...two little lights come on, winking gently as they revolve at its very tip: all this night, too, it will be there, connecting me above

Paris to each of my friends that I know are seeing it: with it we all comprise a shifting figure of which it is the steady center: the Tower is friendly.”4 Finding solace in the presence of others,

even when seemingly remote, stands as an important bond between humans.

Examining the human desire to connect plays a key role to understanding Saint-

Exupéry’s enlightened view of the world gained through flight. From his view in the cockpit he

vividly describes the scenery below, and consequently examines his own place in his

environment and the landscape he is observing. In author S. Beynon John’s critical analysis of

‘Terre des Hommes’, he coins this as a state of altered consciousness: “The solitude and freedom

of flying may bring out the contemplative side of his nature, making him especially attentive to

his own identity, but they also bring him an altered consciousness of his relationship to the

3 Roy, 20. 4 Barthes, 3

planet.”5 His plane proves an important instrument to achieve this state of contemplation on his

place in the world.

The notion that we can gain a new understanding of our environment by observing it

from above, or in a bird’s-eye perspective is expanded in Barthes’ 1964 essay.6 The Eiffel

Tower enabled visitors to, for the first time, view Paris in what he calls a ‘panoramic’ view. This

type of view had previously been associated with surveying nature – observing a landscape –

from a high point in

topography, a mountain for example. But as Barthes states, “...the Tower overlooks not nature

but the city; and yet, but its very position of a visited outlook, the Tower makes the city into a

kind of nature...”7 The Tower allows visitors to view Paris not as a city per say, but as a landscape – a living, breathing environment. Explorers survey a foreign landscape from elevated view points to build an understanding of what lays ahead. In the same way, the Eiffel Tower allowed visitors to prepare and strategize for what lay ahead of them.

The idea of a view point to survey a landscape is a primitive one, and to simply extend it

to a cityscape does not further our understanding of the significance of a bird’s-eye view. Saint-

5 Beynon, 35 6 Barthes, Copyrights 7 Barthes, 8 Image: View from the Eiffel Tower

Exupéry’s description of his ‘new and enlightened’ view of his environment suggests a far more

intellectual meaning than just an ability to see what lay ahead of him. From his elevated view in

the cockpit, Saint-Exupéry sees entire cities and civilizations as tiny blots on the landscape, which lead him to contemplate the fragility of human life. In the air, he can see how seemingly insignificant and impermanent their place on the land really is. It is much easier to comprehend an entire city being wiped out by natural and man-made disasters when it is seen in the context of

the planet, or on a more comprehensive scale. Subsequently, Saint-Exupéry’s thoughts travel to

the fragility of his own life. He recognizes this as a common bond between himself and the

inhabitants below and feels an urge to connect with these foreign cultures.

Barthes’ examination of the bird’s-eye view of Paris is more of a conceptual approach

compared to Saint-Exupéry’s somewhat emotive reflections; however his analysis also

strengthens the human desire to connect. Barthes writes of how, “...the marvellous mitigation of

altitude the panoramic vision added an incomparable power of intellection: the bird’s eye view,

which each visitor to the Tower can assume in an instant for his own, gives us the world to read

and not only to perceive...” and that “...to be thrust into the midst of sensation, to perceive only a

kind of tidal wave of things; the bird’s-eye view, on the contrary...permits us to transcend

sensation and to see things in their structure.”8 This is a crucial idea in defining the ‘new’ view

provided by the Eiffel Tower and Saint-Exupéry’s plane.

Barthes suggests that the significance of the bird’s-eye view is that it allows the viewers

to comprehend their environment in a more critical manner. To observe a world’s fair from the

ground level is an experience of the senses. A fair is, after all, designed as an attraction and

therefore must play on the senses to achieve its intended purpose. The ground view is designed

to make you perceive things in a certain way, whether it be in the appreciation of a culture or

8 Barthes, 9

nation, the admiration of a new technology or to marvel at remnants of the past. Regardless of

whether the technology is truly as necessary as it claims, the nation as prosperous as it portrays

itself, or if the artefacts are as worthy of attention, they can all be promoted in a way which

forces you to perceive them as the designer wants you to perceive them. Barthes insinuates that

this sensationalizing inhibits our true capacity to understand our environment and our place in

the world.

On the importance of the critical and structural nature of a bird’s-eye view, Barthes also

writes of the ability to link points from an elevated view. He writes: “...every visitor to the

Tower...spontaneously distinguishes separate...points and yet does not stop linking them...Paris

offers itself to him as an object virtually prepared, exposed to the intelligence...”9 This idea of

linking points expands on the aforementioned traditional notion of observing a landscape from an

elevated point. Here Barthes specifies that viewers not only distinguish points in their

environment, but make intelligent connections. This suggests links of cultural, architectural,

scientific consequence and beyond. It allows viewers to decipher, orient and reconstitute what

they observe. Ultimately, viewers create a multi-dimensional ‘map’ of their environment,

merging their analysis with sensation, which furthers their understanding of the landscape they

are about to encounter or already inhabit.

Again, we are brought back to the notion of a connecting element. Now, instead of the

twinkling lights viewed on the top of the Eiffel Tower, we recognize the view from the Eiffel

Tower as the connecting element. The bird’s-eye view allows viewers to connect elements which they may not have been able to visually connect before. It also allows viewers to recognize patterns, relationships and details that are not possible to recognize from the ground.

For example, in an aerial view of Expo ’67, we can see the prominence and irony in the

9 Barthes, 9

placement of the US and Soviet

Pavilions, with the knowledge of the

tensions that existed between the two

represented countries at that time. The

aerial view allows us to intellectually

compare the two buildings which were in

reality separated by a channel of water,

and which wouldn’t have been juxtaposed with the same effect from a ground view.10

Not only does Barthes’ quote imply that viewers read the world as a rational object, but

also that they do so independently. Each viewer is allowed to observe Paris in the seclusion of

their own thoughts without overwhelming external visual or audio stimulation found in the

grounds of a world’s fair. This also corresponds with Saint-Exupéry’s solitary experiences of

flight. Saint-Exupéry flies with only one passenger, his navigator. Due to the primitive nature of

the airplanes and communication at the time, it is likely that their interactions, besides those of

navigational purposes, would have been fairly minimal. Therefore Saint-Exupéry’s spent most

of his hours of flight in the seclusion of his own thoughts as well.

Ultimately, this ‘new’ view can be summarized as allowing its viewers to observe their

environment as a structural, rational, object. It is easier to see things for what they are when they

are viewed critically and not sensationalized. It allows viewers to perceive things independently,

formulate their own opinion and recognize connections that are relevant specifically to the viewer. The bird’s-eye views from the Eiffel Tower and Saint-Exupéry’s plane avoid interactions specifically designed to have a contrived effect and permit an intelligent, independent cognition on their respective environments.

Image: An Aerial View of Expo

We can now examine the inclusion of a similar view at Expo ’67. At Expo’67, an elevated monorail, called the ‘Minirail’, provided attendees with this mode of viewing an exposition. It featured two circuits: one which travelled from Ile Notre Dame to Ile Sainte

Helene and one that encircled the amusement park, La Ronde. The Minirail provided a much faster alternative to walking – the most common mode of transportation through previous exposition grounds – and allowed attendees to observe far more of the exposition in a smaller span of time. It was not designed to be rapid transit; it was designed purely for sightseeing, moving at a slow enough speed to allow attendees to experience the pavilions and grounds from the elevated track. This would allow the attendees to view the exposition without direct interaction and as a cohesive whole, rather than as individual pavilions and attractions, thus garnering a synopsis of the exposition.11

The Minirail was not the first use of monorail technology, or even elevated

transportation, at a world’s fair. The Seattle Center Monorail was constructed for the 1962

World’s Fair as a short, single line ‘Point A to Point B’ type system, delivering visitors from the

city to the fair grounds. While both monorail systems provided transportation for short distances

in the vicinity of the fair grounds, the Seattle Monorail, in that it is primarily for rapid transit

11 www.expo67.morenciel.com Image: The Minirail

8 purposes; provides views along the way that are a secondary benefit. The Seattle Monorail continues to run today, under private ownership.12

Another example of a transit system is the Chicago ‘L’ Train, which was constructed in

1892, and then connected to the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. Although originally a steam train, the Chicago ‘L’ Train was soon expanded into an elevated electric rapid transit system by 1897.

Like the Seattle Monorail, the Chicago ‘L’ Train was constructed with the purpose of transporting visitors to the fair grounds. Subsequently, the ‘L’ Train expanded service to numerous locations around the city of Chicago and continues to expand today.13 The Chicago

‘L’ Train is a much more complex system and operates on a significantly larger scale than the

Minirail, thus it is essentially very different from the Minirail.

The Minirail’s interpretation of elevated transit may have been fundamentally different from previous examples, but the role of technology was still essential in the perception of, and from, the Minirail. Progressive technologies celebrate the pride of human consciousness. They signify that we are aware we have a place, and strive to further our understanding of the world through these advances. At Expo ‘67, technologies played a visibly prominent role in order to celebrate the success of humans in the sixties. Escalators – as featured in the US pavilion – were an attraction on their own, drawing visitors to marvel at the conveniences of life in the modern

USA. While neither the escalator nor the monorail were new technologies – the escalator was first patented in 1853 – they achieved a novelty status.

At first glance, the Minirail appears to provide a similar intelligent view as Saint-

Exupéry’s plane and the Eiffel Tower. While the Minirail may have been a still been a relatively new mode of viewing a world’s fair, its views had a fundamentally different effect than those

12 www.seattlemonorail.com 13 www.chicagotransit.com

9 from Saint-Exupéry’s plane or the Eiffel Tower. The most visually evident difference between the Minirail and the Eiffel Tower or Saint-Exupéry’s plane is that it is not at the same height.

Though elevated at a height of up to forty feet14 - about twelve meters - above many of the pavilions and structures, the Minirail is not high enough to be classified as a plan or bird’s-eye view. So in reality, the view from the Minirail is not even the same type of view as those offered from the Eiffel Tower or Saint-Exupéry’s plane.

Its short-comings in providing an intelligent view are more deeply rooted in the method of delivery. The Minirail incorporated movement, and consequently a constantly changing view and it did so with a new technology in transportation. The combination of both movement and new technology would incline viewers to a sensationalized view. Coupled with a less comprehensive view of the Expo grounds, it is unlikely that viewers would have had the opportunity to view as intelligently as from the Eiffel Tower. While the idea of a sightseeing monorail may have been promoted as providing a ‘new’ view of the fair grounds, it did not provide as convincingly valuable an intellectual view. It is hard to disregard novelty and sensation when you are in constant motion throughout the journey and the overall view is constantly changing.

By examining and comparing the writing of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry – the creator of the theme for Expo – and Roland Barthes – critic of the Expo ‘89’s Eiffel Tower – we can see that the view from Expo’67’s Minirail was fundamentally different from the intellectual view that the two former sources provided. The Minirail cannot be isolated as a significant factor in drawing people together, as planners described in their explanation of choosing “Terre des

Hommes” as a theme. Humans have an innate desire to see things in plan because it allows us to

14 Seifert, 2

make links and connect elements in our environment. Like the lights viewed by Saint-Exupéry

in remote Argentina and the lights twinkling on the top of the Eiffel Tower in Barthes’ window,

we search for links between ourselves and others. This comforts us in our individual solitude,

whether we are in a truly remote location or isolated in a modern city, because it makes us aware

of the common bonds between all mankind. These bonds transcend culture, religion and race,

and draw us together.

Saint-Exupéry’s airplane and the Eiffel Tower provide more than just a view; they provided new means of understanding one’s place in humanity and the common emotions that bind us together. In the words of Saint-Exupéry, “Nothing can match the treasure of common memories, of trials endured together of quarrels and reconciliations and generous emotions.” 15

15 Saint-Exupéry, 45

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Images:

Foreword

The USSR and Thailand Pavilions at Night, Expo ’67 Dixon Slide Collection, http://digital.library.mcgill.ca/expo-67/index.html

Page 2

Saint-Exupéry in Flight, http://www.poesie-citation.fr/images/stories/antoine-de-saint- exupery.jpg

Page 4

The View from the Eiffel Tower, http://www.mathisphoto.net/Panoramics.htm

Page 7

An Aerial View of Expo, Expo ’67 Dixon Slide Collection, http://digital.library.mcgill.ca/expo- 67/index.html

Page 8

The Minirail, Expo ’67 Dixon Slide Collection, http://digital.library.mcgill.ca/expo- 67/index.html