Aviation Tour - Maps on www.bankleft.com

Back into Germany but further south a few days later, we landet at the brilliant airfield at Rheinfelden, near Basel. The boarders are very complicated here, right on the star where Switzerland, France and Germany meet. The airspace is Zurich though, which the Germans complained was so that the Swiss could bring all their heavy transport arrivals in overhead Germany rather than Zurich itself. 

Neat modernisation to utilise Roman ruins. I've been loving 'caged stone construction' around here.

There is a summer house garden on the airfield here for members, who permitted us to pitch our tent. No longer being summer no one else was there!

The wide valley of the Rhine is quite industrial here but the airfield and characters are first rate. Sitting around the club table out the front of the great reastaurant, a local pilot Michael told us about his work for a local Swiss aero maintenance and fit out company.

These guys fit out the 737s that Russians and Arabs own (many of, they typically have half a dozen so that the whole royal family can travel together away from the sand pit without exposing themselves to the risk of all being shot out of the air at once). He told quite a story. With long range tanks to be able to fly around the globe continuously, other than all the usualy things that one might imagine, these planes apparently typically have full garages with hoists for Ferrari collections, anti aircraft (and missile) laser defence systems and fully equipt operating theaters with a medial lift down to the operating theatre, fully equipt for absolutely anything in case the main man needs open heart surgery while travelling somewhere. If the client wants a Picasso hung in the plane, Michael has to find something similar to burn test in order to comply with airworthness requirements. He told us of a recent job where they flew a 737 over to the states (16 hrs) and back just to have the intertainment system connections set up by the specialist manufactuers solely to ensure that there was no slight glitch as the TV signal receiver changed to a new sattelite during a flight. Seriously. These guys have their beds gimballed and then slaved to the artificial horizon on the flight deck. Mind bending isn't it? Gotta love Switzerland.

We cycled over to the Vitra furnature factory where the huge new Herzog and Demouron designed furnature display centre was in full swing.

When they open this place 6 months ago they had no idea how popular it would be.

Their HQ visits have doubled. 'Mr' Vitra seems to be a patron of architecture as he has appointed several key exponents to design constructions for his site there. Along with Zaha Hadidn's first ever comission (an obomination) is a relocated Bucky Ball, a Grimshaw factory wing, a retched Gehry museum building and a wonderful Ando concrete meeting complex. The new display centre really is very good and while exhibiting H&D's typical disregard for practicalites of circulation, has a simplicity of form that leads to some wonderful volumes and is beautifully specified and detailed. I'd hate to think what they paid for it but I've no doubt that they are glad now.

Chair;

Chairless (they sell these webbing loops for 20 Euro)

Buckminster Fuller (originally installed elsewhere in the 50s);

Prouve Petrol Station;

Grimshaw - shining best with factory design? Unfortunately for me, who actually likes factories, we weren't shown any of the real production facility housed here. Boo.

Gehry;

Ando. Best building here by a long shot. He doesn't have an architecture degree. Goes to show.

Zaha, you are making my girlfriend sick