Tegel Airport Research Explores Creative Approaches to Master Planning

Launched this month as a book and DVD, Tegel: Speculations and Propositions brings together responses from artists, academics, writers and cultural theorists through text and film. It is the culmination of 18 months of enquiry, imagining how the modernist Tegel building – a symbol of the changes in global travel and consumerism – might function beyond being an airport.

These musings range from dystopian, apocalyptic premonitions to science fiction stories, where a group of space travellers have returned to the site. Other contributors have proposed the site as a new centre for sustainability, or a palliative care centre, where the dying might spend their last days. Joseph-Lester’s contribution, Executive Lounge, traces the last moments of Tegel Airport’s private business lounge and its financial class.

Tegel: Speculations and Propositions started out as a programme of short artists’ videos made in response to the imminent closure of Tegel Airport. The short video programme was shown at The Kino, Babylon in June 2012 as Tegel: Flights of Fancy. This latest publication has evolved as a consequence of the deferred closure of Tegel Airport until 2015, and includes an interview with the airport’s architect, Meinhard von Gerkan, discussing the freedom of airport design before today’s security demands. Eight writers have been commissioned to develop their ideas around the past, present and future.

Joseph-Lester has collaborated with artist Julie Westermann, also a senior lecturer at Sheffield Hallam and Suzanne Prinz, head of the exhibitions space of Kunsthochschule Kassel and L40 in Berlin.

The ICA in London will host a one-day symposium in June, bringing together artists and designers to discuss urban regeneration.