AN AIRPORT IS NOT A MONUMENT: CHARLES DE GAULLE'S TERMINAL 2E

摘要

The curve is back. After it fell down ingloriously and with fatal result four years ago, Charles de Gaulle's tube of 2E airport terminal has reopened this spring and has immediately become crowded with a full load of international travelers. Only somebody who remembers the former Departure Hall 2E with is bravura sweep that indeed did seem to defy gravity (for a while) will notice that it has become a place that exhibits less daring than the original. Both were designed by Paul Andreu in 1997 as the latest instalment in his episode-by-episode articulation of the different bits and pieces of airports strung together by a circulation that, because of that decision to make everything clear and separate, is attenuated and very long. Terminal 2E is the most monumental of Andreu's creations at de Gaulle, at least as far as its interior spaces go. From the outside it is also the simplest: one curved vault covering two floors for the entrance area, almost 700 meters long, a connection, then an even longer tube curving towards the airfield as the check-in area gestured to the landside. This second tube is self-enclosed and clad in glass, providing a single space at which a dozen large planes at a time can dock. The main check-in area is in the stretched vault that sweeps over one in concrete, with the various services that let one actually use the space, such as airline counters, services and shops, cower below this grand public gesture.