This 256-page hand-bound volume is the outcome of a brief in which students are asked to explore a mundane object in a book format. The book is about wings as a metaphor, concept, tool and mankind’s relationship to the flight that it enables. Aviation today plays a vital role in the commerce, economics, culture and the increasingly globalized nature of the world. Every day on wings of steel, people travel 35,000 feet up in the air and are transported at staggering speeds of well over 700km/h — all while being served food and refreshments — a seeming triviality. When the Wright Brothers achieved controlled lift for 59 seconds in 1903, thousands of years worth of accumulated human knowledge went into informing that previously impossible feat. 

The higher you fly, the more you can see. Perhaps the greatest boon flight has given us, as cited by many an astronaut, is the gift of perspective. In the International Space Station, astronauts spend their free time “earthgazing”. They spend hours staring at the blue marble we call home spinning against the blackness of space, watching whole continents, mountains, forests, cities, deserts, coasts and oceans pass underneath. Needless to say, the sight is known to leave an indelible impression

We humans — and all animals and plants for that matter — share a biological, chemical and elemental bond with the Earth. It is a symbiotic connectedness who’s history can be traced unbroken from the day some primordial soup gave birth to the first living organism on this planet. Literally billions of years have gone into the making of this very moment as you read these sentences. And while we have learned how to fly, we have also learned how to do other things; like how to achieve nuclear fission or how to mine for deep-sea oil and how to mass-produce plastic. With great power, comes great responsibility and I firmly believe, and this is more or less the crux of the book, that a better understanding and appreciation of a planetary perspective gained from the power of flight could mean the difference between humanity soaring to even greater heights or otherwise suffering a possibly irrecoverable fall