hub-and-spoke

Via Coudal Partners’ Fresh Signals and related to a recent post, we appreciated this study on identity and branding of the airlines of Africa that emerged in the 1960s as colonialism was receding as a way to celebrate independence and self-determination. Logos, route maps and other ephemera from several national air-carriers have been curated by Northwestern University with brief histories of the airlines and links back to original sources to learn more.

call sign

Thanks to the always engaging Kottke, we are re-acquainted with the meticulous and dedicated assemblage of mostly defunct corporate logos from graphic design artist Reagan Ray, informed by the public’s captivation with and appetite for Mid-Century Modern and nostalgia for the glory days of air travel, with this curated collection of US regional carriers in what was once a pretty saturated and granular market.
Who knew that Anniston was once headquarters for the commuter airline Alair—AL for Alabama but certainly not the only option for the state? Or that Oakland, California once had Saturn as a carrier? Browse with caution as poking around the various archives and collections could easily turn to an all day distraction.

jet set

The TWA hotel housed in an incredibly restored 1962 terminal designed by Eero Saarinen (previously) has just recently celebrated its grand opening and welcomes its first guests at the John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens, New York. Given the convenience and immersive atmosphere that perfectly captures all the best of Mid-Century modern glamour, lodging seems rather reasonably priced and it costs nothing to visit and walk through the main terminal. Learn more at CityLab at the link above.

music for airports

Our thanks to the always engrossing and enlightening Open Culture for turning our ears to this special, time-dilated edition of Brian Eno’s electronic music improvisational session from 1978, a collaborative tone poem of meditative incidental music called Ambient 1. Establishing the genre, the artist hoped to produce something as “ignorable as it is interesting” and conducive of reflection amid all the chaos and cacophony of an international terminal. The sound installation was set up in the Marine Air concourse of the LaGuardia airport during the mid-1980s but is not currently soothing anxious passengers—at least not over the public-address system.

no₂

With the season of annual superlatives upon us, we quite enjoyed this curated gallery culled from the submissions to the National Geographic Photography Competition. The grand prize went to Jassen Todorov, violinist, photographer and flight instructor, who snapped this stunningly tragic image of thousands of automotive exiles, mothballed in the Mojave Desert.
An aircraft boneyard is just out of the frame and the assembled field of cars represent just a fraction of the millions that had to be idled. These Volkswagens and Audis from the model years 2009 to 2015 were not only not compliant with US Environmental Protection Agency and EU emissions for nitrogen oxides and carbon dioxide standards but the engines were moreover designed to cheat—with so called defeat devices—during trials to pass testing. This is certainly a powerful and iconic reminder on how we all pay dearly for something so cheaply underestimated. See more stirring winners and worthies at the link up top.

the lost squandron

Among many other momentous events that occurred on this day, as our faithful chronicler Doctor Caligari reports, five US Navy Avenger torpedo-bombers took off for a three-hour training exercise from an air base in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 1945 (designated as Flight 19) with a compliment of fourteen airmen and the crew of thirteen of a Martin patrol bomber Mariner dispatched to search for the missing squadron after radio contact was suddenly lost and all disappeared without a trace.
This incident and geographically related ones led an Associated Press correspondent Edward Van Winkle Jones to speculate in the Miami Herald five years afterwards how in the modern, push-button era such mysteries and disappearances could abide—setting off a chain of embellishments that led to the concepts of the deadly Bermuda Triangle and the Limbo of the Lost, with supernatural and extraterrestrial overtones. In an article appearing in the occult, pulp fiction verging to softcore magazine Argosy (meaning a large class of merchant ship from the thalassocracies of Venice or Ragusa) in 1964, Vincent Gaddis defined the esoteric vertices as San Juan, Puerto Rico, Miami and the island of Bermuda. The triangle corresponds with one of the most heavily plied shipping lanes in the world and the frequency of vanishings can be attributed to the amount of air and sea traffic converging from all points.

drawing board

We had encountered the proposal to put a triumphal ziggurat in Trafalgar Square beforehand but until now—thanks to Things magazine, we had not appreciated the whole scope and scale of London’s alternative monuments and transport plans. Visualised and superimposed over the modern city, the gallery contains rejected and rather fantastic architectural ideas like an elevated runway for a Westminster airport pitched in 1934 or the 1967 plans for monorail servicing central London. Check out the whole collection at the links above and discover more on the theme of unbuilt cities.

holding pattern

Via the ever excellent Everlasting Blört, we are treated to one of the side projects from the extensive portfolio of designer and art director Lauren O’Neill with this curated gallery of airport runways and landing fields captured from above. Working nearly directly under a busy flight path myself, it’s an intriguing idea to contemplate and marvel at the symmetry of safety and logistics and wonder what sorts of aerial imagery I can find myself.

oldtimers

Previously H and I had enjoyed touring the sister campus in Speyer where a 747 and the Buran, the Soviet version of the Space Shuttle, are on display and recently redeeming one of H’s birthday gifts, we got to take a look at the sprawling museum, amusement park and cinema das Auto- und Technikmuseum Sinsheim, the largest private exhibit in Europe that curates some three hundred classic automobiles (Oldtimers auf Deutsch), forty racing cars, thirty locomotives, one hundred and fifty tractors, dozens of player pianos and calliopes plus over sixty aircraft, including the two supersonic commercial planes built the Anglo-French Concorde and the Russian Tupolev Tu-144, visible when passing by on the Autobahn.

The vast halls contained a really impressive amount of Mercedes (including some infamous ones custom-made for Benito Mussolini and Heinrich Himmler) and some extraordinary Maybachs produced for the anonymously, forgotten well-off, with a significant portion maintained in fully-function condition.

Also on display for inspection were an original model DeLorean and a motorised unicycle from 1894, whose time has come around again. Of course the exhibits are worth marvelling at and pretending to sit in the driver’s seat and quite a few are up for demonstration, but moreover it’s something inspired to think about the level and depth of engineering that went into each of these machines, some three thousand all told.

the truth is out there

Rather than the usual under construction signs begging off any inconvenience caused, the authorities at Denver International are instead embracing the lore that’s been built up since its opening in 1995 while major renovations are undertaken at the airport’s Jeppesen Terminal.
Conspiracy theories abound and the airport expressed a willingness to parody itself, including its apocalyptic murals, “Templar” marking, coded Masonic words printed on the carpet (which are questionable transliterations of Navajo topographical terms), and a purported network of subterranean passageways that connect world leaders with aliens lodged at the relatively nearby military installation colloquially known as Area 51. See more of the publicity boards at the link above.

trending now

Rather than exploring neologisms for their novelty, Weekly Word Watch, is taking a different tack and examining a few terms that have demonstrated some endurance and may have the traction to enter into common-parlance.
I imagine that this is a daunting task and would surely court disagreement no matter how conservative and seemingly safe the choices and not feedback that I’d relish confronting. I would have included bespoke in this group—a word that I thought sounded pretentious when it gained wider context—or perhaps zeitgeisty but I can’t say whether or not either of these words are employed anymore. One term that’s shown some staying power although it rings brand new to me included set-jetter: a play on jet-setter, it first appeared in print in 2007. Set-jetting describes the phenomenon of media (television set) driven travel, with tourists seeking out shooting locations featured in film (beginning with the Tolkienisation of New Zealand) and continuing with popular series and the advent of prestige television, often a mixed-blessing with deleterious effects for natives.

seaplane

Financed during the inter-war period by the Germany Ministry of Transportation partially to circumvent peace treaty conditions which limited the range and speed of aircraft produced and to captivate the public—who were impressed with this feat of engineering but it never proved commercially viable—the prototype Dornier Do X had its first test-flight in July of 1929 on the Swiss part of Lake Constance (die Bodensee). The largest and heaviest flying boat (Flugschiff) ever built, it was designed to accommodate a compliment of fourteen crew members and between sixty-six (long-haul) and one hundred (short-haul) passengers and after trials that achieved the requisite altitude for a trans-Atlantic crossing, the craft began a tour of Europe with the aim being to introduce the flying boat to North American markets.
A series of accidents and mishaps instead diverted the plane to meandering course to Brazil via the Azores and Cape Verde and north to Puerto Rico and finally landing ten months later in New York City and Newfoundland before a return flight to Berlin. Public jubilation could not overcome financing hurdles (made all the more difficult to secure due to the burgeoning Great Depression) and further botched excursions, though the Dornier Do X concept demonstrated what could be done with amphibious aircraft and opened up business to the idea of international passenger service.

departures and arrivals lounge

As Curbed reports, the restored 1962 Eero Saarinen’s iconic TWA Flight Centre—originally designed as the terminal for the Trans World Airline’s hub at the John F Kennedy International Airport of New York City—the “Grand Central Station of the Jet Age” to be revitalised under protective status (not all were so decorously spared) as a historic landmark (Saarinen also designed the Gateway Arch of Saint Louis, Missouri) as a conference space and hotel that reference the Mid-Century Modern trappings of its inception is, construction work continuing a pace since 2016, already accepting bookings for a projected opening date early next year. Check out more photographs of the interiors with retro furnishings, skyboxes and other amenities at the link up top.

7x7

zoëtrope: a group of humans on a merry-go-round create an astounding animated effect—previously

estate sale: mystery surrounds the discovery of a priceless Willem de Kooning painting among the effects of an unassuming couple who recently passed away

in-flight entertainment: LEGO Minifigs present the pre-takeoff safety video for Turkish Airlines

streptomyces grisus: New Jersey poised to become only the second state in the union to designate an official bacterium, the first significant antibiotic strain discovered there since penicillin was isolated

䷩: the I Ching is as much about divination as it is about keeping an open mind and being receptive to new angles

gratulera: IKEA celebrates its seventy-fifth anniversary by re-issuing some vintage lines

we’re here all week, folks: Ordinance Survey Maps Fan Club performs at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 

8x8

home-grown: a design studio in Brooklyn grows gourds in moulds to create an alternative to disposable cups

hidden in plain sight: Greenwich’s secret nuclear reactor

mea culpa: social media turns to television advertising in an attempt to win back users’ trust—we’ve seen these on German prime-time too

the colour of pomegranates: rediscovering the suppressed films of director Sergei Parajanov

quiet skies: the US Transportation Security Agency directs air marshals to arbitrarily monitor frequent flyers

an der schönen blauen donau: a time-lapse of a bean germinating into a plant, accompanied by the waltz

king cotton: an art exhibit, referencing the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, disabuses notions of American exceptionalism

clickbait: a shop sells tee-shirts that purposefully enrage pedants by getting movie quotes and titles slightly wrong, invoking Cunningham’s Law

ultramarine

John F Kennedy with significant input from the First Lady choose the iconic design of the airplanes bearing the designation Air Force One and that standard has endured out of respect for both Kennedy’s memory and aesthetic principles for fifty-five years. Now reportedly, Trump plans to change the design, decrying that the fleet of planes don’t look American enough unlike his signature transport whilst campaigning and are lacking red accents, calling the particular shade of blue a relic and a Jackie Kennedy colour. One can only guess what sort of crass and gaudy redesign that might be proposed.

streamlining

Our gratitude to Nag on the Lake for introducing us to the Franco-American industrial design pioneer Raymond Loewy whose multidisciplinary vision informs a magnitude of iconic brands and defining how form follows function.
Among his contributions are the interior of the Boeing Stratoliner, various locomotives, coaches, the Sears Coldspot refrigerator, the Schick electric razor, the Lincoln Continental, a jukebox, a version of the Coca-Cola bottle and the Coke can, Lucky Strikes cigarette packaging, subway cars plus the interior and living space of Skylab and the Concorde. Additionally, Loewy created logos for TWA, SPAR, Exxon, Shell and many others. Go over to Nag on the Lake at the link up top to see an insightful 1979 CBS television interview with Loewy, dubbed by the press as the Man who Shaped America.

saor ó dhleacht

Having passed through the gates of Shannon Airport ourselves a few times, we found it quite fascinating to learn that the terminal in western Ireland on the river’s estuary was home to the world’s first duty free shop and will be sure to make special notice of it next time around.  Planet Money fills us in on the life and times of consummate hospitality professional and marketing expert Brendan O’Regan (1917* - 2008 †) whose talents intersected with the limitations of early trans-Atlantic air travel and recognised a business opportunity.
After realising the popularity of Irish Coffee (his first contribution to the world), O’Regan catered to regular arrivals of weary, battered travellers whom had just made the rather arduous hop from North America to Europe and had to land at the first opportunity or were outbound for the same daunting journey, since early planes lacked modern amenities and range and had to make landfall at the first and last opportunity for re-fuelling—which Ireland geographically availed herself of—and saw that his rather captive consumers, elite jet-setters to a person, whose money was burning holes in their pockets, and O’Regan wanted to alleviate their boredom on this layover leg of their trip. Referencing an ancient custom still codified in the law books of allowing sailors to purchase booze without taxes if it was for export and personal consumption, O’Regan successfully pled his case to the Irish government in 1947 to allow him to experiment with an exercise that undercut the government itself by not collecting taxes and losing out on revenue with the promise that by showcasing local items, keepsakes and souvenirs including speciality Irish whiskeys—and manufacturing provenance after a fashion—at a discount, the scheme would encourage local tourism and more than make up for lost revenue on the trinkets.

The model was an instant success and proliferated quickly to airports worldwide—then cruise ships, border-crossings, etc. with some products, like Toblerone (previously) owing its cosmopolitan success to careful product-placement in duty-free stores. O’Regan’s third act was as peace ambassador, helping to end the strife in Northern Ireland and promoting cooperation between Ireland and the UK.

8x8

mother will protect you: Billy Butcher re-imagines Black Mirror episodes as comic book covers

memory hole: the fickleness of contemporary media and format-shifting could create a digital dark ages for future historians

attitude polarisation: the elusive nature of the backfire effect

gorillas in our midst: despite how plausible it may seem, White House staff did not fall over one another to create a custom entertainment channel for Dear Leader

to tell the truth: ladies and gentlemen, Miss Kitty Carlisle

dammit janet: become an flight attendant for the US’s most secret airline, the one that shuttles employees between Las Vegas, Nevada and Area 51

take two of these and call me in the morning: vintage Bank of America spot for “Instant Money”—caution auto-play

much amaze: a crypto-currency based off an internet meme created in 2013 has a market-capitalisation of over a billion dollars, via Slashdot 

flugverkehr

On this day in 1917, the German Air Shipping Company (der Deutsche Luft-Reederei) was incorporated to service a mail route between Berlin and Weimar (regular passenger flights came two years later) and a series of mergers pre- and post-war eventually led to the establishment of Luft Hansa—presently Lufthansa. The scope and mission of the company has certainly changed over the years but the stylised crane (Kranich) designed by architect and graphic designer Otto Firle has remained a constant.