Of airports and architecture : exercises in public form

Abstract

Airports as an architectural and urban typology typically lack physical and spatial integration with their urban context. Contrary to the city, airports have evolved into semi-autonomous spaces and products of political and economic conflicts between local and global constituencies, generating physical and spatial barriers, consequently denying the airport's role as a civic and public space. Boston, with its rich history of urban public space in the Olmsted tradition and Logan International Airport sited adjacent to downtown and the dense neighborhoods of East Boston, Winthrop and Chelsea, is representative of this problem. This thesis explores the point at which existing urban fabric and airport protocol/culture merge, where latent potentials for infrastructure and architecture become strategically urban, reconstituting the existing tensions between airport and city in the formation of new public space and productive dialogue.