Megastructure Schiphol
Design in Spectacular Simplicity
Edited with text by Koos Bosma. Text by Marieke Berkers, Iris Burgers, Karel Davids, Abdel El Makhloufi, Heidi de Mare, Anna Nikolaeva, Jan Willem de Wijn. The Amsterdam Airport Schipol can genuinely be called a megastructure. Originally opened in 1916, Schipol has been added to in fits and starts over the years, maintaining throughout its construction an extraordinary consistency and simplicity of design, and expanding to become a city in its own right. Now one of the world’s busiest airports, Schipol enjoys an iconic status in Holland, and not only because of its sheer scale--its signage, for example, developed by the information design firm Mijksenaar, has been adopted by airports all around the world and is admired today as a classic motif of Dutch Design. Megastructure Schipol looks at the history of Schipol: its metamorphoses over the years; its function as a model for other airports; and its unique accommodation of the surrounding metropolis, in terms of economics, infrastructure, design and image-making. |
