On the other hand, the sheer volume of space recalls a very different heritage.
And by escaping traditions of architecture one might slip the ties of social structure, the tedium of bourgeois living, or the unaccountable mess of organic growth. Hangers and their ilk represent an escape through engineering from traditions of architecture. Their recent history has been as muse to various varieties of modern architectural movements: from the Modernism of Le Corbusier, via the techno-utopian vision of Archigram to the corporate precision of Norman Foster. Hangers, and other similar industrial structures inherit a complex genealogy. Like a vacuum, its emptiness exerted external force, sucking in potential content.
Enough to charge the erotic coupling of infrastructure and leisure. Enough even to precipitate an unlikely a use as a Tropical Island resort. Enough to create a sense of impending event. Its scale was enough to convince prospective shareholders to invest. It was intended to house the huge airships, though they never materialised. A vast, uninterrupted volume - the largest clear span in the world. The two incarnations share one un-ignorable element: the hanger. The Tropical Island promises escape from post-industrial Germany to a fantasy destination. CargoLifter, before its collapse, promised escape from geography - a way of moving things around the world cheaply and efficiently. Perhaps, deep down in each project lurks the same kind of feeling - a shared romantic desire for escape. What strange magnetism draws them together? Why would the flaws of one attract the other so strongly? A Montague CargoLifter to a Capulet Tropical Island. The Cargo Lifter and the Tropical Island Resort might be a love story between two very different characters across the lines of genre, and in spite of the prejudice of function. It's the kind of place that happens through the unfolding of a story rather than logic. It is a phenomenon rather than a design, a history not a process. A bright, fake landscape trapped under the hangers' shell like a snow dome without snow.Īctually, even a Bond villain might struggle to create something quite so strange. It's what you might get if you asked a Bond villain to design you a CenterParks: A Tropical Island Resort built in the giant hanger of CargoLifter - the ill-fated German airship of the 1990s. A prototype craft is 260 meters long, 82 meters high, and requires 550,000 cubic centimeters of "lighter than air" helium gas in order to take flight.Anything to Feel Weightless Again: The Cargo Lifter and the Tropical Island Resort Technically, the CL 160 is seen as the modern answer to the country’s famous zeppelins, which plied the German skies between Berlin and Lake Constance in the early part of the 20th century. Government officials and Cargolifter executives heavily promoted the project both domestically and abroad. Politicians long hoped that the Cargolifter project would provide a needed boost to the economy in the eastern state of Brandenburg. for commercial, security and "homeland defense" purposes.īut Cargolifter has been unable to secure government aid or a private round of financing to keep the CL 160 project afloat.įriday’s news led to an eight percent decline in Cargolifter shares, which closed at 1.30 euro ($1.20), down from a high of 23 euro ($21). aerospace giant Boeing for the joint development of "lighter-than-air" vehicles for use in the U.S. Cargolifter’s chief director, Carl von Gablenz, said on Friday he was planning layoffs, and that the Brandenburg-based company would shift its focus to the manufacture and sales of smaller transport balloons.Īs many as 500 jobs are said to be on the line at the company, which has been plagued by financial problems for months now as it has developed the CL 160 blimp.Įarlier this month, Cargolifter struck a deal with U.S.
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