Short Story: Radisson Blu
It’s easy to become numb to the architecture of airport hotels. They are, by design, transient spaces, built for forgetting. Yet, this particular building on the Bath Road has always struck me as an outlier. Those repeated, almost ecclesiastical arched windows seem to tell a different story than the usual glass-and-steel boxes. And they do. Before it was a Radisson Blu Edwardian, it was simply The Skyway Hotel, which opened in 1960. More than just a place to sleep, it was a pioneer of the airport hotel concept in the UK.
This wasn't just a building; it was a slice of the new jet age, a symbol of modernity conveniently placed for the first generation of mass air travelers. The name has changed a few times since Edwardian Hotels bought it in 1989, but the bones of the place remain a quiet monument to that optimistic dawn of popular flight, hiding in plain sight.
→ Fujifilm X100F
