Aviationland

Name: Aviationland
Price: 82.95 AUD
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ISBN: 9781913107536

Heathrow and the Making of an Airport Landscape

Mark Crinson

$82.95

Hardback

Forthcoming
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English

Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art
23 June 2026

Public buildings: civic, commercial, industrial; British & Irish history

How the UK's largest international airport remade a local landscape

Aviationland is the first critical study to examine how a major international airport takes shape on the ground, and what that means for the landscape around it. Focused on Heathrow airport, it traces how the area has been formed and reformed by overlapping systems of architecture, infrastructure and enclosure, from the common land of Hounslow Heath in the eighteenth century to the global transport hub of the present day.

The book explores the different forces that have shaped the airport's environment: the remaking of landforms, the design of terminal buildings, and the surrounding sprawl of hotels, schools, factories, and business parks. At the same time, it shows how the Heathrow area has been moulded by wider shifts in energy, mobility, and the economy, and how the airport has in turn left a lasting mark on its surroundings, both materially and ecologically.

Drawing on previously unpublished material, Aviationland includes close studies of key sites, as well as figures who shaped how we see the airport today, including Richard Rogers, Patrick Abercrombie, and J. G. Ballard. Bringing together architectural, landscape, and infrastructural histories that are seldom read in tandem, this volume makes the case for Heathrow as a distinctively modern landscape. The result is a nuanced account of how local places become entangled within global systems, and what happens when they do.

By: Mark Crinson
Imprint: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 241mm, Width: 165mm,
ISBN: 9781913107536
ISBN 10: 1913107531
Pages: 358
Publication Date: 23 June 2026
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Mark Crinson is emeritus professor of architectural history at Birkbeck, University of London. He spent twenty-three years at the University of Manchester before joining Birkbeck, where he taught for seven years. From 2016 to 2020 he served as vice-president and then president of the European Architectural History Network. He advises the Swiss National Science Foundation and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2023.