ABSTRACT

The 1939 airport terminal at Birmingham was one of the final acts of interwar aviation architecture and one of the most distinctive. To allow passengers to board or disembark from aircraft, a pair of wings was attached to the side of the building to facilitate so-called ‘dry boarding’. This paper will describe the international context for this interesting feature, one which would not be repeated after the Second World War. Interestingly, such obvious referencing to flight in the architecture of airports during the interwar years proves to be surprisingly rare, though examples in other types of building will be discussed. The Birmingham terminal comes at the end of the development of a network of British airports in the 1920s and 1930s, and this programme will also be examined to explain this interesting building’s place in it.

摘要

1939年在伯明翰的机场航站楼是两次战争之间航空架构的最后行动之一，也是最有特色的行动之一。为了让乘客上飞机或从飞机上下来，在建筑物侧面安装了一对机翼，以方便进行所谓的“干式登机”。本文将描述这一有趣功能的国际背景，第二次世界大战后将不再重复。有趣的是，尽管两次讨论其他类型的建筑实例，但在两次战争之间对飞机的飞行这种明显的提及被证明是非常罕见的。伯明翰航站楼是1920年代和1930年代英国机场网络发展的最后阶段，还将对该程序进行检查，以解释这座有趣的建筑在其中的位置。