Airport Landscape: Urban Ecologies in the Aerial Age

Photo © Yann Arthus-Bertrand/Altitude

Airport Landscape claims the airport as a site of and for landscape. Airports have never been more central to the life of cities, yet they remain peripheral in design discourse. In spite of this, landscape architects have recently reasserted their historic claims on the airfield as a site of design through a range of practices. Airport Landscape presents these practices through projects for the ecological enhancement of operating airfields and the conversion of abandoned airfields. The exhibition features work by leading landscape architects and designers including Agence Ter, Gross.Max., Hargreaves Associates, James Corner Field Operations, Lateral Office, LCLA, Mosbach Paysagistes, Office of Landscape Morphology, OpSys, Stoss Landscape Urbanism, Topotek 1, West 8, and Workshop: Ken Smith Landscape Architect.

The related conference convenes a discussion of the airport as landscape with sessions on airport cultures, infrastructures, and ecologies. The conference features keynote lectures by Peter Galison, Adriaan Geuze, Christophe Girot, and David Pascoe, as well as project presentations by Henri Bava, Philip Coignet, Eelco Hooftman, Mary Margaret Jones, and Ken Smith.