North Seal River Airport

Transcription

Good evening. Thanks for coming out. It's a real pleasure to welcome all of you here this evening. Our next event in the Landscape Series will be Tuesday in a couple of weeks on the 24th of March in Stubbins at noon around Sonja Duempelmann and John Beardsley discussing their recent book, Women and Modernity, in Landscape Architecture. Please join us for that. As you may know, the GSD is home to a small and growing cluster of aerophiles, airport enthusiasts. There at least a couple of pilots in the audience. I know several of us here have book-length projects dealing with the airport as a subject. Last academic year, in fact with Sonja Duempelmann's help, we co-convened and co-curated the airport landscape project, looking at the airport as a site to think about as in for landscape architecture. In that context, it struck us as interesting to take a moment and circle back in a way to the origins of the airport as a work of architecture. And so in that context, it gives me great pleasure to introduce our two speakers. First, Alastair Gordon is a noted cultural historian and author. He has authored and edited and published on a range of subjects [? tenant to ?] architecture and design. You know infamous extensive print work and criticism in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Most recently, he's been named architecture critic of the Miami Herald. I first came to know Alastair's work as author of this now 10-year-old volume Naked Airport, which I think has stood the test of time very well. I think it's been quite durable as what it promises, a cultural history of the building type in question. And it's something that I think many of you interested in the topic have come to understand that the airport is most often approached as a technical space. More often than not, it's resigned to simply questions of engineering, maybe questions of efficiency and process. More recently, however a range of people have revisited the airport as a site of culture, as Alastair;s book does quite handsomely. In that regard, we thought it would be interesting to invite Alastair to come and engage as a kind of interlocutor, a critic, and a public intellectual with Paul Andreu. We're very pleased to welcome Paul Andreu. Lovely to have you here. And perhaps more so than any other architect practicing in the world today, Paul Andreu has shaped the face of modern aviation. It's also not always the case here in Piper that we could to welcome an architect whose buildings almost all of you have experienced. And I was thinking about that the other day when I was preparing my introduction. How rare is it? Because often we'll have speakers come and distinguished architects talking about their work built, and how few of us have actually experienced those buildings. And for those of you who have somehow escaped a Paul Andreu airport, you clearly have been in airports that have been influenced in one way or the other by Paul Andreu's work. Over the course of the last five decades beginning in 1967 with a precocious commission for terminal one of what became Charles de Gaulle, Paul Andreu has gone on to really shape the face of aviation internationally. He's received through his practice almost every conceivable recognition that an architect can receive in France. He has also gone on to produce really quite notable works in other typologies of buildings. Along the way, his work has been exhibited and published internationally. He's also interestingly maintained an ongoing commitment to teaching. It's a real pleasure to have Paul Andreu. [applause] Thank you. Thank you. Well, my only problem I'm too long, always too long. So I try to speed, and if I don't, my wife is there controlling me. So if you see hand moving like that, it's my wife. [laughter] OK. So let's go fast. Let me not forget all these words. Uh-huh. Yes. Flying, a dream. Let's go a little bit for the original, otherwise we don't understand anything. I mean just see that two beautiful guy is going to jump. His father is equipping him. It turns bad. Very bad. [laughter] And that dream was not ready to come true. Or some other technique went much smoother. You could have an animal help. And it could even [inaudible] become something to kill [inaudible]. So that was the first destination of the aviation. But, of course, I mean, the real [? class, ?] the real efficiency was with the gods not with [? us. ?] And Hermes, which is not only a fashionable trademark, but the gold with these very little wings right there and some here, we tour the [inaudible] efficiently. And I mean the story of airports is that. Man and machines and a god, business. The machine is there. Ready to act in any field. Any clearing would be sufficient. It's true there were competitors. Not so safe as a plane. Very efficient planes landing on the water. But, I mean, if you don't have a water venue, you cannot have a machine. That was perfect. After the war, we got the super consolation. I mean, it's branded France but as you know it was fabricated in France. So safety, speed, evolution, you will see that all the time as I told you, the god of commerce was dishonest. I found that one day. It's such a tremendous title, World Airport, Aeroport [speaking french]. You see many runways, many taxiways all around. And this is for the passengers. A few years after, less runways, more for the passengers. Some years after. And that is all the story. I mean the machine has to serve. And the real business is having the passenger go in the plane and travel. And that will-- what did I do? So at that moment, we can begin the last 50 years, the story of the airport. Well, three items, we cannot cover everything. And I try once again to go fast, airport in the city, airport as a landscape, airport as architecture. Airport and the city, well, it's very clear. It's a place of exchange. Any city needs an airport. A port can be a city. Any city has an airport, even if it's very difficult to build. And second idea, it's serving but it's a pollution. And that's the very first thing. There must be a kind of pact between the town and the airport at the very beginning to be successful. Very, very fast, Montreal. The first airport here, then they had the idea, OK, we go beyond anything. We have no noise on the town. And they make Mirabel. Mirabel is now shut, no traffic. This is Tokyo. Same thing, same story, but a little bit more successful. They had that airport here right in the middle of the city, Haneda. And they said, oh, OK, we go all the way there. [inaudible] from the town, no noise, nothing. But they had a quarrel with farmers for 20 years. And at the end, this airport not loved at tall. There was never that pact between the town and the airport. But that's the two examples. Most of the time, there is one. Let's look how the business and the evolution of the airport in one city. And this is Paris. Paris is directly in three airports one after the other. The first one, Le Bourget, before the war. Le Bourget is one-sided. I mean, not many-- one runway here. Another one there. This is not used. The towns come to here. There's a limit between the airport and the town. It's a clear linear limit. But you don't make much traffic with that. So immediately after, you'll the drawings of the Monde [inaudible] [? aeroport. ?] Well, of course, it grew or the way as the terminal area [? is there ?] basically were two runways. But there's a kind of heritage that you will find everywhere of so many clumsy runways. And the first stage, though that only was in the '60s. And that one, Charles de Gaulle conceived in the '70s. Well, it becomes the airport of everywhere, parallel runway. In the middle, the terminals and the services. It's completely cut from the environment. It's a kind of island, in fact, in the environment. Roads on the two sites if you can, that's the typical airport you will find now almost everywhere. So let's take some examples of [? overt, ?] of course, Le Bourget or Dubai. Such a nice city with bombs. [laughter] I mean, it's really inside the town and on one side. You see the town around. There's a road there and the terminals are packed there. And two runways here. It's the most important aerial image of a linear terminal on one side. Oh, that one. [inaudible] a little bit like that too. They have added things, but it's a little bit. But you can see in heritage of military directional runways, [inaudible] of course. But that's also the kind of thing we find in Schiphol. Runways, and then you see as in many that we shall see after, the terminals become a kind of kernel inside two or three runways, but only one access. San Francisco is still pictured the same exactly. Two runways, one city-side air-side, they meet in the middle. Chicago curiously has a number of runways. It's difficult to understand how they can manage all that. But again the terminal has been reshaped and reshaped all over. But my first visit for, I don't know, 45 years ago, it was already that kind of design which was changed. New York. You see, all of those inherited from that. And obvious type, well, you have a lot of the most modern airports. Dallas was one of the very first to have this, but also Denver, but also Munich. We have a system pictured here in Munich, because it is reduced to the minimum in the distance between the runway. And the roads are parallel to the runway. And it's a little bit in a way the memory of a Houston organization by [inaudible]. Singapore, it's the same. It's crowded along the green area. And Jakarta. And Munich. And Berlin, which is I think the last one. See, always with [inaudible] system. It's not [inaudible]. It's a necessity. It has to be parallel. And the plane doesn't mind. I mean, before why these runways? Because there was side winds, and the plane would not like to mess with these big winds. They don't suffer so much. Shanghai Pudong was the same, except they hurry to make the full runways. Either way, there is a project in Dubai of extension with six runways but it's the [? gulf. ?] Not sure it's so useful. But making islands in the city, some people thought and thought well why don't you put them in the sea, real islands? So that's Seoul. That's a way to have noise and everything apart. That is Seoul with this organization always the same. But as not an island off the coast of the Pacific. Of course, there is this example of Kansai airport right in the sea. And we've got two islands. I will come back to that. And there's Hong-Kong where they took an island and flattened it to get to a place for construction. And we have two runways and possibly there maybe are some others. But there's a huge capacity like this. Of course, you cannot speak of an airport in the city without mentioning even rapidly the connections with the city by train or road is not enough in most cases. And also, the airports are becoming multimodal platforms really. The first one in Europe at least to have done that is Stratford. The terminal here, a regional train here, so that all the region linear on the river is accessible by this train to the airport. It was in Europe at least the first well-known. Well, this one back to Hong-Kong, I mean, it's also a very good design of a terminal, of a railway connecting to downtown. Even allowing checking in downtown and the terminal right organized. And by the same, I mean, [? foster ?] the Beijing terminal, it's not the regional train there. It's only the metro. But it comes right in the middle of the terminal We have a very short distance to go in between. We have done, in Charles de Gaulle, something which is one step more in a way. It was not at all forecast. It was inserted in the project of the terminal number two. But we have here a mix for every station. We have a high-speed train connecting even to London and Brussels and it's an all-domain towns in France. And also side by side the metro. And they are thinking-- I'm no longer involved. They are thinking of another fast connection to Paris so that in fact, here, you could even come from Brussels by the train and change here. It's really multimodal. But the best I know in the world is that one in Shanghai Hongqiao which is the airport for China. I mean, basically the domestic traffic for China. It's big for domestic traffic. It extends. So and you have their side by side terminal, metro, train. And in fact it's a real, if I remember well, 13 lines. So you have the train coming from Beijing arrives here, but also the regional trains. So [inaudible] the rapid trains for all the region [? over ?] there. And they share really. It's a really multimodal platform. And I think it's the most evoluted in the world. And sometimes, you have to create the site. You don't have enough site, so you make it. It's two examples I [? worked ?] for and [? didn't ?] go. But I'll take some time to explain. There was an island. To extend it for a second runway, you had to build another island. It's very deep in the sea. 20 meters at least. So it settles 8 meters. So the first that's already settled and then you build the second one. And in the first one, there was some suffering because of the light parts and the heavy parts would not settle exactly the same. So it's a headache for engineers, etc. So the first idea of the engineers was, of course, not to connect the two islands, to leave them free, let 200 meters free between them. And now, we had some thoughts with my Japanese colleagues of what kind of terminal would we would do. Of course, there's a train there. There are roads. [inaudible] [? roads ?] would be an expense and also a problem each time. So I came up with the idea that we could make a terminal in a port somewhere as a [? patrol, ?] bring it there as the AV terminal. Floating-- not exactly floating-- I mean ballasted. They would use the same road, the same train, in a very short distance. And here would be only light structures so they could settle [inaudible]. So you just need to kind of show in between. And I don't know if they'll do it now, but [inaudible] in Japan have washed out the project for a while. So I don't know what they ever do. But I mean that was really a good thing. And very shortly after, there was the problem of Dubai. And Dubai they wanted planes [? around there, ?] and that was the position to make a terminal, a shabby terminal. Though I had a lot of work at that moment, so I said, I want to make the competition. But they insisted so I said, OK, you want it, you'll get it. I proposed to build under the apron. In fact, the idea is not mine. It's a Brasilia airport by [inaudible] was like that. I mean, little things on the top and [sound effect] coming from. This time is not pop-pop-pop. It's a full airport. I was just out of making bridges for the planes in Charles de Gaulle so I had a good idea what could be done. So I told them, this part of land is just good for parking. Then the terminal will be under. And the terminal is completely under the planes. And so we made this site inf act. Ah, landscape. Now I must make a pose. That's an airport. And believe me, I've been [inaudible] liked that. It's just Bora-Bora Airport. It's just a runway. Then you take the boat to the island. Well, OK. The other Japanese model is more dense. But yet he has a great, great environment. Miami. I mean, can you believe Miami is a place of sun and plants and something like that. I mean, I've never been in that airport, but I hope I never do. I mean, it's terrible. It's terrible-- concrete buildings. I mean, I'm sure we can do better. Tampa tried to do better, although they had an opinion of the architects, which [? we could ?] speak of. At least it's a kind of green island with two much things in the middle maybe, maybe, but a real try. That's Jakarta, which I'm the father of. Not an expensive airport, they said. And the surroundings were villages. And I proposed to make open structures and not to copy, but to get inspiration from the architectural all around. So it's really an atypical airport, where you've got a [? ideal ?] [? rich ?] and you could walk in the garden, really. It was open galleries. Air conditioning was only for waiting places here, and [? those ?] inverted. A kind of village, overall. And all the surroundings were planted. Well, Singapore is a place, as you know, for many [? plantation. ?] But they have done a lot of efforts, but the terminals are too big. I mean, there's only one green line in the middle. But I expect to do a big extension there, and I'm sure that this garden will take more place. That's something that we did in Charles de Gaulle. All those roads there from the beginning I proposed to leave alone. And I asked the people organizing the forest in France to help me planting. So we planted them all there, and it was respected all they way. And by the way, we had two trees, and that one was more than 200 years old. And it was right on the road. And we fought so that the roads would be diverted, and afterwards the train on the other side would not come into it. This is under protection of a train. It's not the protection of-- if something falls, the train will not suffer. So we saved that tree. And we also tried to make the roads looking-- In Shanghai Pudong, we gave back part of a water. I mean, all this has been [? gained ?] on the sea. So I proposed to have the road coming on water and making also a number of plantations around, making some efforts for the lighting, and inside the terminal itself, having the view on gardens. When you wait for immigration, it's like this. To be frank, I'm a little bit afraid, because there are now works underway. And I'm afraid the garden will suffer. But I hope not. I mean, it's such a nice thing to-- and I explained to people how important it was-- to have a gateway saying, OK, their minute is over. And that was a project in Guangzhou. Everything was green-- the parking, the [? things. ?] It was kind of green, with a road coming on the terminal after [? the other. ?] Well, at the end they made that. I mean, and it's-- See the distance between the dream and this. OK. But I mean, the landscape as you know, can be done of many things. The landscape can be made of roads. Just the roads of terminal number two-- over 20, 30 years, we drew the roads and all the possibilities of roads there. And they built a kind of landscape as such. And at the end, I put some trees. But I mean, there's a continuous-- and that will be your [? sumac-- ?] the thing that the landscape of the airport goes inside the terminals themselves. They're a part of it. And so big terminals become, in fact, landscape as such. So, OK, airport terminal-- they have to be constructed with a time. I mean, the traffic increases. You don't build forever. You don't build for [? everything ?] So let's see very, very rapidly how we could address that. So let's go to airport architecture master plan-- New York-- the beginning. Units-- da, da, da, da, da, da-- all the terminals the same. Immediately after, note everyone in his own garden. And then it came to what you know-- TWA, which we [? pray ?] every day, and the others, and the others, and the others. Well, that's where the units become modules-- different modules. And it comes through this with a constant evolution of each module, each in its organization-- the international [inaudible] TWA, the oval I don't remember which it was. Always at the beginning, there's the temptation to say I have a good unit, and I will multiply. At the beginning of Charles de Gaulle, we had that master plan. And very fast we changed to that one, where we said, we're not so sure to do the same, and do that one. We're sure we don't do the same, because you never do. it's impossible to repeat after so many years, because the traffic is not the same. Many, many reasons, but it's like the story of the Taj Mahal. There's a story that another one wanted to make the symmetrical thing, but in black on the other side of the river, and no. No, you can't. Even that terminal number two beginning, you see it was a [? naive ?] drawing unit after unit. We would build a complex. At the end, and very happily, we had put the entrance and the exit at the same place. So we could at each step-- really at each step-- we could change something. We could integrate that in the design not foreseen. We had to integrate different modules. So after all the steps, it is a kind of unity through diversity. And in my opinion, it's a good example of-- in the complexity of an airport-- is a simplicity compared to a town. The open-ended planning, can produce-- I'm mean, making a master plan most of the time doesn't work. But making a planning which is open-ended would better work. Dallas/Fort Worth built on about the same ideas that Terminal 2 had been built before. I mean, the units, through road-- Dallas and Fort Worth-- and units are around a train delivering-- it's just a great idea. But the molecule after that took various forms. It was also the idea that time at the terminal could be a line-- the simple line-- in between, which doesn't work. You need some more concentration. Well, of course, Atlanta-- Atlanta could do exactly as programmed, piece after piece. But it's because it's such a peculiar airport. It's not so much of a local airport, but an exchange airport. So it's explained completely with form. Now, different types of terminals-- at the beginning, satellites, fingers, others, and now more and more and more, getting out of the articulated volumes to big roofs-- to speak like Chinese-- big roof. Oh, [inaudible] and [inaudible], which were the inspiration of Terminal 1 for me. I mean, I love that project. I think it was bright, the two roads coming on the two sides, the parking lot on top, very concentrated access to the plane on both sides. It was formerly two, But there have been four like this. There were two. And they lived with difficulty, but they lived. And Tampa was a little bit the same, in a way-- the road all around, full access to a terminal, big parking lot, and this access to different units, but that time with train. And that was the very first application, if I remember well, of that link by a people mover. Well, Charles de Gaulle won a [inaudible] of [inaudible] and Tampa, in a way. Except, we didn't put trains there. We tried to concentrate. But we made everything to put around all the facilities. Before that, we had what we call "fingers"-- long, linear construction, like in Orly south. The last of those is Osaka Kansai-- the airport piano design. Long, long, long, long, long, long, from Terminal 1-- 1,760 meters, if I remember well, with a train inside, with a people mover inside. Shanghai Pudong-- about the same dimensions . Always fingers, always fingers, and this was a project that not built, but fingers in a way. Ah, big roof-- or an organization which was criticized with the bus is coming on the side of the terminal-- fantastic. Again, again-- Saarinen again. And the big roofs of today is Beijing. I mean, the airport, as such, becomes a landscape. And it's in three parts. So you see that now the units are becoming-- and [? those ?] coming late in construction and traffic can make very big airports. Since the others had to go step by step and suffer. Here, the development is so fast that you can make those big units community. And the same architect-- Foster-- with Hong Kong. So now the interior space-- ha ha. Is it emotion guiding us, or is it banal decoration? I don't want to comment that. You have eyes to see it. How could they think of all that? I mean, it's so [? surely ?] so-- I went like in the church. I mean, Roman church, for me were equal to that. And that is the [? second ?] airport. And it's a simple space all the way-- fantastic. [inaudible] OK. That was all articulated. Pieces, pieces, and a connection, and every space has its own-- Charles de Gaulle airport really tried with the scale of the roads around, the scale of the waiting rooms, different-- one material only-- but always the space moving around you, if you are big or little, very little, but in the space. Waiting areas-- this terminal too was more of roofs. But altogether, you see there was some always articulation of pieces. Well, of course, the train terminal in an airport has to be linked to the sky. And that was another part. I always wished to have. This was the peninsula into the sky, and a floating flow, and the roof glass. I'll come back to that one. I like it so much. Piano inside-- look. Pure, pure, respiration, pure breathing-- I mean, this decoration, these white things are the ducts-- open ducts for the air conditioning. And the big volume we did there-- long way. Also, Hong Kong, with beautiful walls, unity, space. Well, myself-- not so bad. With the same roof, with a structure with no diagonal. Look-- this becomes a landscape. This is a change in the the building vision you can have. It's so big that the form does become something else-- really something else. It's a construction-- it's a kind of sky of space around. As long as you don't come to the limit. The limit sometimes are a little bit-- but, OK. You remember that one. Constructed under the runway, I said that will be the entrance? That will be a column? I mean, 1,001 nights structure-- it became that. I was not in charge. It became that and that. I mean, it's horrible. It's terrible. Can we live in that? I don't think so. So I want to show you a last example-- very last example. It's the one I'm very proud of. It's Manila airport. It's a very simple airport. We have a simple structure-- 20 meters, not more, straight everywhere-- look. It can be simple. We don't need to be heroic all the time. And I show you the [inaudible]. That's the Bruegel idea of it. You look for [? a car, ?] it's there. That one is plowing. That one is fishing. That one is keeping the sheep. They're not heroic. There's only that silly guy that is there. So there are two images then, of [? we. ?] I mean, it was stupid, and the people don't care. I mean, it could be also the architect at the end, as it was in Dubai, would think. I let you decide. And I thank you. I'm sorry that was a little bit long, but-- Hello? Very sorry, it's difficult to-- Do you want some water? Oh, yes, please. Thank you very much, Paul. That was fascinating. And I realized-- I've never met Mr. Andreu before-- that you have such a calm demeanor. That only a man with such a calm demeanor could handle the obsessive complexities of making an airport-- an urban airport-- into a human place too, which I think you've somehow managed to learn to do at some point. And we've been talking today about figuring out at what point you put it all together. And you're talking about airports like Tampa and Houston. But when you did Terminal 1-- to me the essence of that design that made it poetic, more than just a beautiful piece of engineering in urban planning-- was that central moment. And everybody here who is old enough to have gone through that terminal in the '70s will never forget that moment of you're jet lagged, arriving from New York, and you come in, and you're lost. We always are lost in an airport. We have no idea. As pedestrians, we don't know where we are. And then suddenly, you come up from those satellites. You're underground in some mysterious tube. And then you come up, and they turn into these transparent fallopian tubes. That's how I always thought of them-- being reborn, arriving in Paris. And it was always 7:00 AM, 8:00 AM, because of the time those fights came in. And to me it was-- and everybody I know of that generation-- it was this moment of not only the excitement of the modern age, but very much Paris, and very much France. And somehow you'd taken all this methodology and all these ideas that were maybe coming from Saarinen. But Saarinen, his airports were outgrown so quickly. We all worshipped at this temple of TWA and Dulles. But within 5 years, within 10 years, they were really, essentially, obsolete. The great English critic Banham described the airport-- and I think it was he Heathrow in about 1962-- he described it as a demented amoeba that had no end in sight and had no control. Of course, that's how Heathrow still is. it feels that way. At what point do you feel-- you seem to have come fully blown to Terminal 1 as someone who'd had so much experience. What was it you did, and what were you studying, and who were you looking at that allowed you to bring such sophistication in terms of not only urban planning, but the engineering, and then that beautiful, poetic-- you retain poetry, somehow, I think in all your airports. In that moment in the center where you come-- it's almost like a [? pyrenees ?] irrational moment in the midst of this incredible irrational system. Well, you know, I always was convinced that architecture is more than construction. And that is what is more of a degree of symbolism, of poetry. It's difficult to define. You don't put that like jam on a piece of bread, It has to sour from inside. But in the same time, nearly all of my life, I didn't speak too much of that, because the people asking me to design airports didn't ask for that. I had the chance to be the designer and to do it. So I didn't speak of it. I would say it's functional. It works like that. Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. I could explain everything functionally. For example, the tubes in the Terminal number 1-- it is a very poetic thing. And by the way, at the time we had no computer and nothing of the kind. It was rather difficult to organize in the space. But I always explained that it was not to make a U-turn. A U-turn in the middle would be difficult. The people would stop, and it would make jams. So in many instances-- I mean, I always thought architecture was my secret a little bit, and that gave me freedom to put it inside. I had to be [inaudible] person, good on function. Was it also the bureaucracy of the Aeroports de Paris? Did that allow you more freedom than you think architects in America, let's say, or other countries are allowed at that point? I had a great amount of freedom. And there was also something I did, because some of my friends-- architects-- they say, oh you had the thing coming to you without an effort. Yes and no. I mean, I was in charge of the airport, but I had to fight every day with people around me-- every day. And that was one thing I did was accepting to be a part of the organization. That is being every Monday morning for 30 years in the conference room with all the directors-- of course, drawing on paper, because I cannot help it. They never understood what I was doing, but hearing everything, being informed of everything, and [? sometimes ?] [? saying, ?] oh, well, this staff problem-- why don't you solve it like this? Just to prove you are there and you understand what's going on. And it was an organization where the architect could sit with the others and have his word. That a lot of them hated me is also true, because I was saying no, no, no-- you don't do that, or no, no no. And I was the young guy at the beginning, and I was from far the oldest at the end. I've seen quite a few of your early sketches. And they seem to be-- you come up with this singular-- I don't know if you do those early or you do those after the fact. I assume you do them in the beginning-- but very singular, fast sketches of a single form that looks like everything goes into that somehow. And did you use that as kind of an icon that you would show everybody to get through this difficult process of bureaucracy and everything else, or would that come later? My drawings, which I make-- I have now 60, nearly 70 books of 200 pages of drawings. My work is research-- only research. When I know what I want, I stop. And for years and years and years it was completely my work. I didn't even show them to the people I was working with. I would work and then come back to other people and remake them big. Again, because there's no project in which I have not been at the origin of a form. It doesn't mean I did everything. On the contrary, I had a big team and very good people with me. But I could understand only the good ideas of the others when I had worked myself and prepared something. If I had prepared something, I could understand that this one had a better idea than me and that we had to adopt this idea. But otherwise, I'm lost. I mean, it differs for the architects. They react in very different ways. Some architects have a fantastic judgment. What's the name now? Rogers. Rogers has a kind of judgment-- it doesn't do so much. He sees things and phew-- he can correct. It's fantastic. Me? I'm lost. I see a drawing on something I did. I'll say yes, well, yes. We could do otherwise, yes? Maybe. I don't know. When I've worked it becomes easy. What was the big transition you made from that fortress-- I think Paul Virilio wrote-- about the time that you finished Terminal 1-- he said, the modern airport as the last gateway to the state now resembles a fortress. Do you remember that? Yeah. Which I think is true, because it's very opaque. There are no windows on the main bulk of the circle of the Terminal 1. It's all concrete. The other part is the parking lot. There's an opening. There's a linear opening, but it looks-- Like a fortress. --like a fortress. And in a way all of the story was leaving the ground for the air. So this building was attached to the ground. And the satellites were open to the air. But it's also detached because you have this beautiful-- I just love that elegant kind of moat. You have a moat of air around it, through which you can see the tubes coming from the satellites, through which you can also see the highway coming in, and there's not a train there, so you don't see the train. So you are reveal-- you're disclosing. But you reveal-- [interposing voices] At the end of 20, 30, years there's a little train coming. There's a little train. So you're enclosing all the space. But you're constantly revealing it, but just in little bits here and there. It's only for, I think, 200 yards where you see the highway coming. But there's an enormous shift in the whole paradigm of how you're thinking about airports when you start on Terminal 2. It's completely different. Instead of the centralized object, which I presume could not be expanded, unless you go up. You're right. You cannot. We came to a complexity and a density that you could not make any larger. The [? legacy ?] system would become crazy. Many things would become pretty crazy. I tried, and it was-- an [speaking french] but we say in France-- impossible to marry to anything. Sorry, I didn't get that. That's it. She's so difficult. But you told me you went to look at Dallas/Fort Worth, and you met Thomas Sullivan. Thomas Sullivan, for anyone who doesn't know, was this kind of mythical figure who was the master planner of Idlewild, which became JFK. And his original notion was decentralized-- everybody had a different terminal, and everybody had its own identity. It was completely different. It became this kind of World's Fair of an airport, more than a defined space. And then he realized that was a complete failure. And so when he started DFW, what he told me when I interviewed many years ago was that he'd seen a television commercial for Hertz Rent-a-Car where-- I don't know if any of you remember this-- but the guy would arrive in the airplane and, he would float out from the airplane and into a convertible rental car. And that's the transition. And all the engineers and architects who worked in Dallas/Fort Worth were shown this commercial over and over again. And they were supposed to interpret this. And that was the idea, so you'd have a very short--it was incredibly short-- distance between the boarding point and the parking lot in Dallas/Fort Worth. Exactly, and that's was the same moment that Kansas City tried to do. Kansas City very similar, with the circular, periphery. Two of them, and Berlin did it also. Berlin-- Tegel. Tegel did it. And Terminal 2 began like that. But if read [? ton ton, ?] in ton ton, in Tibet there's a beautiful airport, which was a model. I mean, there's a man, a flag, and a plane, and that's all. That's it. And everybody said why is it complicated with all these things. Put these units one after the other. And it was the time where people believed in multiplication of a unit may do something. But that is a very wrong idea at the end, because the multiplication of a unit is just a proliferation. When you go to life-- a cell plus a cell plus a cell is just a proliferation, maybe a cancer. If you want an organism, you have to get specialized cells. And absolutely you must have communication between them-- blood, nerves, things like that. And at the end what I understood in Charles de Gaulle is that the most important thing was the system linking the terminals together. The communication between them-- people mover, but also information system, but also [? legacy ?] system, but also-- I mean, these where really the organic basis of the airport. Do you feel it worked? I mean, looking back on it now, do you feel over that 35-year period that the original cellular concept panned out and was effective? A good deal of it-- a good deal of it, but not completely, of course. I mean, it's never complete completely. And in a way, the big problem is if you do build the exact terminal the people need at the moment, and as you said, 5 or 10 years after, it doesn't work anymore. It's obsolete. So it has to be-- it's like the doctor saying to the mother, don't be too good of a mother. Be a medium-good mother. It's much better than the exactly perfect mother, which spoils all the [speaking french] That's really something you must deal with. It must have the possibility to adapt. If it has too much possibility, it's unorganized. If it doesn't have enough, it will be-- You wrote something a few years ago that really intrigues me too. You said that as you were working-- I think on Terminal 2 and maybe some of the other projects in foreign countries-- that you realized time had become a material, much like concrete or glass or any other material. And that somehow that was an element. I think that's a brilliant breakthrough, for especially someone working in this highly complex field of airport design. And somehow you were able to keep it all together. What did you actually mean by that, in terms of was it was a poetic moment you had after the fact, or would you really consider that, as you said, as another material, a workable material? I remember I made a comparison one time of Terminal 2 in its state at the moment and Kansai airport. For Kensai airport, I had done the concept and Renzo did the architecture. But I had done the concept itself. And I compared the two-- same capacity, same length, same number of planes, people movers in the two cases, and forms which are totally different. I was surprised to find it was so equal. And I was really wondering which is the good one? And the answer is there's not a good one. There is the one you can build with this time schedule, and this one you can build with this other schedule. But if you try to make the Kansai airport piece by piece, it absolutely doesn't work. I mean, you cannot make a part of whole like this and increase the people movers. I think that Terminal 2 is perfectly fit to what was required at the moment-- not too much money, one company developing and changing its mind. Air France changing its mind from I want a point-to-point very fast to I want to make a hub, which was completely different. So we could adapt and change. And the Kansai terminal, especially with architecture of Renzo, became a wonderful thing. In fact, he used-- and we used-- the time really as a material. Calling that a material is maybe a poetic license. When you revisited the Terminal 2 or any of the other projects over time, were you ever shocked at what you'd done 20 years before? Because most architects don't have that opportunity to revisit a project they'd worked on 20 or 30 years before. And then everything's changed-- the technology, the planes have changed. You mention-- I hadn't even thought of that-- Air France as a client. You have to please them. You have to please the Aeroports de Paris bureaucracy. In fact, it's plowing always the same field, as I did for 30 years or more, even more, It's a fantastic opportunity. I mean, I don't know any other architects having such a chance. I don't either. But in another way it's a torture. [inaudible] Everything bad you have done, you see. Every change they do-- silly changes-- you see. And you're furious inside, and you say, why? And I fought with the people and that was when I went-- You know, it's both a big chance and a great difficulty-- really great, great difficulty. What an extraordinary career and life you've had. Amazing, thank you. Should we have questions? Anybody have a question? Yes? Hi, thank you so much, both of you guys for being here. I just finished reading your book actually, Alastair, which is great. But one thing I wanted to ask both of you was in the latter half of the 20th century, the airport increasingly started absorbing all these non-aviation programs, to the extant where now it's been kind of bandied around for while, this idea of the airport city. But of course it's not an actual city. It's like a simulacra of an idea of an airport urbanism, or there's an idea that it's in evolution, and it hasn't yet become the city that it has the potential to become. And I was wondering what your thoughts were-- both of you-- about this phenomenon, and what the airport would need to either catalyze itself into the next phase of evolution where you think it's going. If it's possible, even, to have the idea of residents or an idea of permanence in the airport-- is that something that's possible, or even good, with all the hotels that are there? These airports like Heathrow employee tens of thousands of people. And in the past, Orly, for instance, was a destination that people would just go to visit. Like, they'd be on the jetty, for instance. [inaudible] They would go to cinema there. It would be an escape from reality. Now it's not that. It's this place where people largely don't want to be, and they want to pass through without really registering passage. What is your response to this and this phenomenon? Where do you foresee the airport going, or where would you like it to go? I think it's done all the things you say. I think the early phase of the airport city was kind of blown away by 1970 with the coming of the jumbo jet. And suddenly it wasn't a place you took your family to go see a movie or have dinner, watch the airplanes. Suddenly it was very different. But in recent years, I think one of the most extraordinary evolutions-- and Paul knows a lot more about this than I do-- are this whole new wave of sort of down time in this place you're locked into especially, since 9/11 and increased security and surveillance. You find yourself sometimes four hours in Dubai, or someplace like that. Obviously there's shopping, but I love all these new yoga rooms and meditation centers. And Changi, for instance, has the butterfly court, where you go, and you can get very zenned out hanging out with butterflies, which is I think the point of that place. Have you designed some meditation centers or spiritual centers? Well, it was quite a story, because we had in Orly a place for all the religions. So I began the same in Charles de Gaulle. But I called all the people from [? move-- ?] all the priests-- to a meeting. And they were very thankful that I invited them and very polite and soft people. But I understood there was something wrong. So after a moment, I say, there's something wrong. Just tell me. And they say, mm, it's just that in Orly there's the cross, so we cannot go there. It's open to everybody, but we don't go there. So I decided I would make three different places. And I don't know. It's most of-- they a lot do of work with people who travel on a stress, people losing members of a family, or something that. They do a lot of work. But to come back to the question, there's two things. There are two things. I'm [inaudible] that kind of vision, that exploded city. The city has had a tendency to-- at least if we look at some cities in France and Europe-- to expel, to explode and expel parts apart. Airports-- go away. You're making noise. Universities-- we get rid of you. Go a little bit further on. And then shops, big shops, [? mock ?] shops-- you want to go buy car, go there. And in this explosion, each piece has a kind of memory of a town and has a kind of a [? conception ?] of not being a town. So some of these markets-- big shopping areas-- wanted to become again towns-- building a church, or building this or building that. Airports were building this. But they're fake cities at the end. In my opinion, this exploded city is no longer a city, really. So we have to change really the paradigm or what. And the second thing is-- I mean Andy Warhol, I'm not sure I liked his painting all the time, but his thinking I like. He said everything will become a marketplace. Now we have air terminals. I mean, how would you say that? [speaking french] Commercial centers-- you have different types of commercial centers. You have the airport model, the railway model. They're all commercial centers. Andy Warhol is right. The museums themselves are on the verge to become commercial centers, in which you can see painting. And this is also something which maybe we have to accept as a change, but also that we have to think of. At least I'm not fighting against it, but it's a kind of reduction. Everything in all these airports, to find always the same products-- [? or ?] the skin, the this, the fashion-- it's always the same. You went 10,000 kilometers to find exactly the same. A few places like San Francisco, which has been encouraging local, artisanal food people and beauty products, and things like that. Do we have another question? Anything? Is that about right? One more, oh sorry, go ahead. For the last 15 years or so, especially in North America, there's been a lot of regulation that impacts how the stress that fliers feel as they're going through the airport-- going through additional security checks, so on and so forth. To what extent has that impacted the way that you designed interiors of airports to react to that increased regulation? That's a great question. Oh yes, of course. It's had a big influence. It's had a big influence. I mean, the separation of arrival and departure, which had advantages of having flows which do not intersect each other, was really completely adopted because of that, because of control of the people going to the planes and letting the others get out. It means at a certain moment the airports were a place where you would come across others, see their faces. Typically now an airport is you see their backs. When you arrive, you see the backs of the people. You hardly see somebody coming in front of you, except in the commercial are, once again. Could you have done the central vortex of Terminal 1 in post-9/11? No, no, no, and in fact, we had problems. Where shall we put the control? Where shall we put the-- and it spoiled a little bit the idea of that all of us [? control ?] [? the ?] [? space, ?] spoiling our lives. I You cannot go through-- I was in the museum this morning-- in [? your ?] museum here. When the people cross, it's splendid. I'm at the opera in Beijing with two entrances, but it could be a place you could just cross to avoid walking outside. But the controls-- no, impossible, closed, finished. If [inaudible] comes back, I won't see it, but I hope I will see it. Great note to wrap up, I think. Thank you very much, Paul. Excellent. Thanks, thanks, everyone. Alastair Gordon, Paul Andreu, thank you so much for this evening.