»Aviopolis

Aviopolis combines cultural theory, schematic illustrations, technical photographs, and discourse in a beautiful book -- and I just picked it up for the pictures! The book forms part of a multi-media project published by two students at the University of New South Wales, exploring the concepts of metastability and noplace: the ever-changing physical presence of these cities, which could be anywhere. The Narrator's monologue from "Fight Club" came to mind: "You wake up at Seatac, SFO, LAX. You wake up at O'Hare, Dallas-Fort Worth, BWI. Pacific, mountain, central. Lose an hour, gain an hour. This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time. You wake up at Air Harbor International. If you wake up at a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?"

Reading through Aviopolis, I was struck by its provocative notion that the airport is the city of the future, and that this city could be any place: never mind the strip malls, the homogenized main streets from Frankfurt to Lisbon to Tokyo: the airport, our portal from each city to the next, is everyplace but noplace.