In much the same way that views of the earth from the Apollo missions in the late 1960s and early 1970s led indirectly to the inauguration of Earth Day and the modern environmental movement; the dawn of aviation ushered in a radically new way for architects; landscape designers; urban planners; geographers; and archaeologists to look at cities and landscapes. As icons of modernity; airports facilitated the development of a global economy during the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries; reshaping the way people thought about the world around them. Professionals of the built environment awoke to the possibilities offered by the airports themselves as sites of design and by the electrifying new aerial perspective on landscape. In Flights of Imagination; Sonja Duuml;mpelmann follows the evolution of airports from their conceptualization as landscapes and cities to modern-day plans to turn decommissioned airports into public urban parks. The author discusses landscape design and planning activities that were motivated; legitimized; and facilitated by the aerial view. She also shows how viewing the earth from above redirected attention to bodily experience on the ground and illustrates how design professionals understood the aerial view as simultaneously abstract and experiential; detailed and contextual; harmful and essential. Along the way; Duuml;mpelmann traces this multiple dialectic from the 1920s to the land-camouflage activities during World War II; and from the environmental and landscape planning initiatives of the 1960s through today.
#345469 in eBooks 2015-06-02 2015-06-02File Name: B00MVFDF9K
Review
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Four StarsBy PrintBoyA great examination of one of my favorite topics!4 of 4 people found the following review helpful. The Hard-Boiled library.By Keith SadlerThis book belongs right alongside J.Naremores More Than Night:Film Noir in Its Contexts. Noir as a style is far more complex than most ever imagined. This book goes a long way toward understanding this cinematic legacy.3 of 4 people found the following review helpful. Brilliant!By DelphineProfWith Unless the Threat of Death Is Behind Them: Hard-boiled Fiction and Film Noir; John T. Irwin provides once more a study on the detective fiction genre with a bright insight. The only reproach I could formulate is the authors tendency to over-quote the original texts; even in cases when it is not absolutely necessary (which tends to make his summary of the novels he is studying rather lengthy.) However; the finesse of his theories easily makes up for this slight problem.
