So far I have described how during the war and at least until the mid-1950s the terms landside and airside were either put into disuse or deliberately abandoned for not reflecting the new interests of airport planners and their mechanistic vision of the airport. The Oxford English Dictionary credits the Daily Telegraph in 1955 as the first publication to employ the words landside and airside in order to define the distinct parts of an airport terminal; but as I have shown in chapter one, they were used during planning stages of LaGuardia Airport at least eighteen years earlier, in 1937. Proving that one exception always breaks the rule, the normative bible of airport planning and design, the famous Annex 14 of 1947, surprisingly makes constant reference to both terms. Thus, in these following paragraphs, I will elaborate on how and why the terms had such a preponderant role in the manual.
The imperative need to regulate the chaotic disparity of national and international aviation encouraged the international community to found the 1944 PICAO (Provisional International Civil Aviation Organization), which, after two years of analyzing the status of international aviation and airports, took its final and current shape as ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) in 1946. Its standards for aerodromes (notice the word, instead of airports) was instantly accepted worldwide.
The same team of international experts put on paper a number of Annexes or standard manuals that were meant to regulate both the airspace and the land-space of aviation.
The first edition of Annex 14, Aerodromes (1951), was rapidly replaced by the
thoroughly revised second edition of 1953—which, according to contemporary airport planners, instantly became the norm for planning and designing airports (see next chapter). The terms landside and airside are used throughout the 133 pages of the document and even defined in the separate glossary of terms:
Airside: “That area of an airport which is in whole or in part under the
jurisdiction of the Government Control Authorities. Where this jurisdiction of the Government Control Authorities does not apply, it is that part of the airport terminal building(s) with immediate access to the apron. In both cases, the air-side area is prohibited to the non-traveling public.” (International Civil
Aviation Organization [ICAO], 1953, p. 121)
For the specialized scholar, this is a fascinating attempt especially within the context of the early 1950s. The definition is rather ambiguous because instead of providing a single, standard case or condition, it provides two possible scenarios and one inflexible rule. The first part of the definition presents the airside as an area of the airport (without defining one) that is under full or partial control of the state. Meaning any, but the terminal. Surprisingly, the second part of the definition makes reference to the terminal and its zoning, but not the airport as a whole. So as a subtraction, it fails to define multiple areas that are implicitly left out.
Thus, if this speaks of areas and jurisdictions, it also implies borderlines and frontiers. Then, according to this rule, everyone traveling is allowed on the airside and therefore the apron, and it segregates only spectators and passenger companions.
There is also ambiguity in the understanding of what constitutes immediate access to the apron. Does it mean that there are no control points, or just doors and fences, or anything at all? One of the keys to understanding this definition is the fact that at the time every single passenger had to walk on the tarmac to enplane.
Landside: “That area of the airport and buildings which is available to the non-traveling public.” (ICAO, 1953, p. 128)
This definition is comparatively much shorter, meaning that whoever is in control of the landside—as here defined—is relatively irrelevant (implicitly, irrelevant for the state). Rather, the clear message from ICAO was that “everyone not traveling” was unwelcome within the state-controlled zones. The spirit of both definitions—
understood as complementary concepts—is maybe clearer now; there is an underlying need to segregate, at this point at least, two different kinds of users.
From the above-mentioned definitions one may infer that in this case, ICAO tried to use the landside–airside boundary as a super control mechanism. The creation of global institutions represents what James Scott (1998, p. 4) calls “high modernism,”
or a strong exercise of control through regulation and reordering through the coercive powers of the state (or group of states in this case). The physical reference in both definitions emphasizes the need to define material boundaries, though it leaves out room for any non-physical dimensions of landside and airside. The text of Annex 14 (ICAO, 1953) also includes the definition of an airside assembly area (airside waiting lounge; airside waiting room; embarkation room), or the “accommodation allocated to passengers on the air-side of the airport terminal building for their use prior to
embarkation” (p. 122), and the concourse (common concourse; hall; landside
assembly area; lobby; main concourse), which is “that area on the land-side of the airport terminal building provided for the convenience of passengers and the non-traveling public” (p. 122).
Figure 2.2. A normative illustration by ICAO, showing graphically how airport planners worldwide should draw the boundary between the landside and the airside.
Notice the difficulties in making this regulation comprehensible and applicable across the table. Reproduced from Aerodromes: Annex 14 to the Convention on International
Civil Aviation (2nd ed.), International Standard and Recommended Practices, by International Civil Aviation Organization, 1953, Montreal, Canada: Author, p. 19,
“Diagram for Passenger Flow Routes.”
These two definitions speak less straightforwardly of the use of landside and airside, not as spatial labels but as tools for segregation. It speaks indeed of areas which are separate, but as a norm does not let us know how or where to draw the line;
what should designers do? The laxness of the definitions leaves clear that each airport or terminal layout would be resolved through a per-case negotiation. The standards are furnished with some drawings addressing specifically the landside–airside as territories divided by an intangible boundary. The illustration depicted in Figure 2.2 is perhaps one the most relevant pieces of information regarding the topic of this study.
This sketchy hand-drawn illustration shows us an example of how to treat the boundary as a material entity. There is a serious contradiction between this formula and my previous analysis of ICAO’s definitions, as both the landside and airside are now invading the neutral territories of the terminal building. The use of a broken line suggests through points or lanes and avoids, as a representation, the implication of a partition wall.
In sum, the drawing resembles a hesitant approximation of something that is better to leave partially unclear or open to interpretation. (It is useful to remind the reader that these standards are international and are applied in all sorts of cultural contexts.) In addition, Annex 14 mentions the “flows of load,” referring to passenger and visitor patterns of movement. It demands that the “design of the terminal building on the land-side should facilitate the disembarkation of passengers, under cover, and the unloading of their baggage from vehicles at the same point” (ICAO, 1953, p. 9).
From this quote, it is clear that for ICAO the landside is the side of the building facing the road. In this same sense the manual suggests that, “whilst it is not practicable to recommend a maximum walking distance within the terminal building, it is desirable that the distance which passengers have to walk from the land-side entrance of the terminal building to the air-side exit be as short as possible.”
Moreover, “it is equally desirable that the route which the passenger has to follow within the terminal building be as straight and direct as possible.” (ICAO, 1953, p. 18). Again, greater emphasis is placed on the existence of two faces of one building, one representing the entrance and one the exit. This in itself contradicts the glossary definitions discussed above (let us remember that before the 1970s, visitors’
access was granted up to the doors that connected to the [often] lower apron).
However, inside the building the question of where the boundary is remains open, as shown in Figure 2.3, which depicts an airport in Charleston, West Virginia.
Figure 2.3. This photo portrays the free flow in the early postwar period between the landside and the airside. Charleston, WV Airport, twentieth-century building type.
Reproduced from Airport Terminal Buildings, special issue of Progressive Architecture, by Arroyo, N. R. et al., May 1953.
The photograph portrays a relaxed landside–airside boundary, according to which the different layers of rooms, glass walls, promenade, terrace, apron, and airplanes are part of the same uninterrupted sequence. With regard to baggage
handling, Annex 14 sets the standard for locating domestic and pre-cleared baggage.
The code recommends that the baggage claim be “appropriate to the arriving passenger flow process and with ready access on the land-side of the building to public and private transportation and that the unloading of departure baggage from vehicles should be off-loaded from vehicles under cover on the land-side at the same point as the passengers are disembarked” (ICAO, 1953, p. 29). At this point ICAO literally portrays the landside as the road and the drop-off sidewalk, and this fact explains why so many planners keep using the same concept in the present day.
One more critical aspect addressed in the manual is that the word
segregation—previously used by Froesch and Prokosch (1946) and in the multi-cited Progressive Architecture special issue on airport design of 1953—has been carefully replaced by the less-charged term separation. The manual instructs designers on how to separate passengers from non-traveling people (such as relatives, friends,
companions) as follows: In the case of international passengers, separation should be effected for departing passengers at the point where final personal control commences;
this, where [outbound]
customs clearance is required, is normally at the position referred to above as Customs Personal and Hand Baggage Control; where outbound Customs is not required it may be at the Currency or Passport Control point). It is important that adequate provision be made to ensure that the handling of passengers at the airport-handling counter (check-in point) is not impeded in any way, i.e.
the airline handling counter should be isolated in a suitable manner. If this isolation is achieved by means of guardrails, sufficient space should be
allocated in front of the handling counter. In addition, arrangements should be made so that arriving passengers can join the non-traveling public at the point where they clear the final inbound control. (ICAO, 1953, p. 11)
This article clearly shows the difficulties of understanding and defining the materialization of the landside–airside boundary. Again, rather than being a norm, it is a set of design restrictions that are flexible and interpretive. But it is striking to see
how ICAO needed to represent a physical frontier for each of the three options: at the outbound customs stand, at the currency or passport control point, and at the check-in counters using guardrails. Even for the early 1950s, norms that implied containment were hard to understand, and when put into practice they usually eliminated security leaks. While Annex 14 speaks of two possible configurations for an airport, neither is suggested as ideal and much less as a norm. The “finger system” is described as a layout whereby protrusions from the terminal building extend into the apron area, giving access to aircraft parked on the apron, normally immediately adjacent to the finger. A finger can take the form of either an extension of the terminal building, a pier or a tunnel, or a fenced passenger walkway on the apron. When a finger takes the form of a pier it can have one or more levels (floors). In contrast, the “open apron system” is defined as “a system whereby there are no protrusions extending into the apron area. Access to parked aircraft may be gained by walking or by motor transport and involves the passage of passengers, baggage, freight and other load to the parked aircraft across an area in which aircraft are being maneuvered” (ICAO, 1953, p. 62).
In an “Open Apron System,” walkways are defined by painted lines on the surface of the apron and aircrafts are parked adjacent to the terminal building in more than one row, thus requiring that passengers and loads be moved through the first row to get to those beyond.
This austere classification is accompanied by a long analysis of advantages and disadvantages wherein the finger system’s outcomes are superior by far, with the exception that it does imply a higher initial investment. In short, this article shows the struggle between the old “Open Apron System” and the more modern finger system, and what takes place here is the fight between two epochs and two ways of
understanding the landside–airside boundary. A good analogy for explaining the aforementioned is to imagine the piers as elastic extensions onto the apron, the result
of which is now a much more reduced space and surface in proximity to aircraft but one that is, evidently, now much closer. In simple terms, it is bringing the terminal into the realm of aircraft forming a 90-degree or less angle with the concourse.
In conclusion, I suggest that ICAO experts’ use of language throughout the manual evidences their own concern with classifying and reordering the parts that form an airport in the 1950s, and furthermore seeks to homogenize on a larger scale the routines and zones in order to standardize as much as possible. It is the need to break with the established jargon that perhaps explains the profuse use of some outdated and unconventional terms. In this context, the inclusion of landside and airside and, more specifically, the boundary, worked well as a socio-technical tool that conveyed a much deeper thinking of the nature of the airport. Also, the
acknowledgment of the landside–airside boundary as a tangible entity opened perhaps prematurely—though only partially—a discussion on how the boundaries are finally negotiated.