Home
Politics
Eventually, his thoughts will be collected into a book entitled "A Week At The Airport: A Heathrow Diary", which is due to be published in September, with 10,000 copies also being given to Heathrow passengers.
De Botton says he has been given full access to the airport during his week-long commission and full creative control over the book's contents.
"I have always found airports mesmerising," he said.
"If you wanted to take a Martian to a single place that best captures everything that is distinctive and particular to modern civilisation in its highs and lows, you would undoubtedly take them to the airport."
He added that airports encapsulate "all the big themes that we otherwise know just as abstractions: the power of technology, globalisation, the environmental debate, consumerism, the frenzy of the modern workplace and the dreams of travel."
Terminal 5, designed by top British architect Richard Rogers's firm, opened to great fanfare in 2008 but was immediately hit by cancellations due to problems with baggage handling systems.
The fiasco was described as a "national embarrassment" by lawmakers on the House of Commons' Transport Committee.
So far, de Botton's musings have focused on praising the terminal building, which he said evoked Claude Monet's painting of Paris's Gare Saint-Lazare, and considering the reunions which take place at airports.
He described how, on entering the building, travellers could "let the imagination loose on the limitless supply of fragmentary stories provided by the eye and ear".
He also conjured up the emotional reunion of two lovers at the airport.
"From nine thousand metres up, she had anticipated Gianfranco's touch. But now, after eight minutes of sustained embraces, they had (no) alternative but to go to the car park," he wrote.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
De Botton says he has been given full access to the airport during his week-long commission and full creative control over the book's contents.
"I have always found airports mesmerising," he said.
"If you wanted to take a Martian to a single place that best captures everything that is distinctive and particular to modern civilisation in its highs and lows, you would undoubtedly take them to the airport."
He added that airports encapsulate "all the big themes that we otherwise know just as abstractions: the power of technology, globalisation, the environmental debate, consumerism, the frenzy of the modern workplace and the dreams of travel."
Terminal 5, designed by top British architect Richard Rogers's firm, opened to great fanfare in 2008 but was immediately hit by cancellations due to problems with baggage handling systems.
The fiasco was described as a "national embarrassment" by lawmakers on the House of Commons' Transport Committee.
So far, de Botton's musings have focused on praising the terminal building, which he said evoked Claude Monet's painting of Paris's Gare Saint-Lazare, and considering the reunions which take place at airports.
He described how, on entering the building, travellers could "let the imagination loose on the limitless supply of fragmentary stories provided by the eye and ear".
He also conjured up the emotional reunion of two lovers at the airport.
"From nine thousand metres up, she had anticipated Gianfranco's touch. But now, after eight minutes of sustained embraces, they had (no) alternative but to go to the car park," he wrote.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
