Airworld. Design und Architektur für die Flugreise

Journal of Transport History, The, Sep 2006 by Henseler, Christoph

Alexander von Vegesack and Jochen Eisenbrand (eds), Airworld. Design und Architektur für die Flugreise, Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein (2004), 240 pp., a59.90.

This impressive volume accompanies an interesting exhibition at the Vitra Design Museum, which is at the moment touring through Europe. The book and the exhibition are dedicated to the history of air travel design. The title adopts a wider approach, not ending at the design of planes and airports: 'Airworld' - a term from Walter Kirn's novel Up in the Air - in this context refers to the functional and aesthetic coherence of all areas concerened with the passenger, from the airlines' advertising posters, their corporate design, the airports' architecture, to the layout of the cabin, the uniform of airline personnel and the design of dishes and seats. The exhibition and publication present the historic evolution of all of these artefacts of air travel.

In a first article the historian of tourism Hasso Spode overviews history of air travel in the twentieth century and the snowballing effects of booming mass tourism. Koos Bosma outlines the main trends in airport architecture in its structural and historical composition, unfortunately limiting his approach to the well known North American and European airports. Barbara Filton-Hauß depicts how the constrictions of lightweight construction from early on enforced innovative solutions in the architecture of the flight cabin. A famous example is the steel tube chair developed by Junkers to furnish the JU-13. It was a direct forerunner of the famous Bauhaus chair. In spite of this, aircraft designers for quite a long time tried to imitate the design of train compartments to conceal the plane's specific tube shape. The exciting blueprints for the cabins of the jumbo jets are still impressive, but most of them weren't realised, owing to the need to maximise the seating for economic reasons.

The chair is the focus of Jochen Eisenbrand's contribution too. He presents its evolution from the simple cane variety of the early days of aviation to the modern ergonomic Pullman seats - an improvement of the 1950s. Since that time, at least in tourist class, further development was more or less limited to integrated entertainment electronics and more effi- cient seat arrangement. By telling the history of the design of chairs and of dishes developed for the airlines Eisenbrand shows how airlines as national flag carriers became prime movers in corporate design.

The contribution of Joanne Entwistle deals with the stewardess, her uniform and her image as one of the most attractive jobs for women until the 1970s, and at the same time a symbol of 'glamour, freedom and untamed sexuality' (p. 178), a cliché brought up by novels and movies and pushed by the airlines in the design of uniforms and advertisements. To this day the stewardess's uniform is one of the most important figureheads of the airlines and only in recent times has the women's movement brought a shift in her professional role.

Matthias Remmele presents poster art in aviation, and Christoph Asendorf interprets the impact of aviation design on art, design and architecture outside the 'Airworld'. Unfortunately the volume lacks the view of the passenger despite the foreword stating that such people need more attention. A look at the psychological impact of transport on the experience of travelling in the air would have been a good complement to the planners' view. The impact of 'Airworld' design in other industrial and societal realms is also missing, and it would have been especially interesting to look at the efforts of the railways to imitate aircraft design. The dramatic change in design leadership, from railways to airlines, would have been a wonderful chapter of the book. But these minor weaknesses are fully compensated by the fantastic illustrations and the layout. Since the history of design in air travel has not been the focus of aviation history so far, the book definitely fills a gap.

Christoph Henseler, Technische Universität Berlin