Today is a conversation with Charles Waldheim. Waldheim is a Canadian-American architect and urbanist. Waldheim’s research examines the relations between landscape, ecology, and contemporary urbanism. He is author, editor, or co-editor of numerous books on these subjects, and his writing has been published and translated internationally. Waldheim is John E. Irving Professor at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design where he directs the School’s Office for Urbanization. Waldheim is recipient of the Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in Rome; the Visiting Scholar Research Fellowship at the Study Centre of the Canadian Centre for Architecture; the Cullinan Chair at Rice University; and the Sanders Fellowship at the University of Michigan
Today we’re talking about an article he wrote called ‘Aero-Gangplank and the Avant-Gard' which appeared in LOG 46. This episode is called ‘Overcoming Spatial Fixity’. I’m not sure that’s the BEST title for this conversation but we begin by discussing the development of airports in the 1950’s and the eventual use of gangplanks that get passengers from the terminal to the plane. This moves us to discussions of other examples within architecture that have sought to overcome fixity (from the kinetic movements of the Aero Gangplank, to Clip On’s & Plug In’s of Archigram and others, to the non monumental system architecture of Cedric Price’s Fun Palace.
