The TWA Hotel has opened at JFK Airport in New York. Centered on the careful restoration of Eero Saarinen’s landmark 1962 former Trans World Airlines terminal, the hotel features 512 soundproof guest rooms, restaurants, and retail outlets. The project was led by Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners, with two new hotel wings designed by LUBRANO CIAVARRA Architects and Stonehill Taylor, and a 50,000 square meter events center by INC Architecture & Design.
The Ilan and Asaf Ramon International Airport has opened in the Negev Desert of Israel. Designed by Amir Mann-Ami Shinar Architects and Moshe Zur Architects, the project was made to service the Red Sea resort city of Eilat and the surrounding region. The airport's design was influenced by the futuristic world of aviation and the project's natural desert surrounding. Commissioned by the Israel Airport Authority, the project is Israel's first civil airport built from scratch.
Safdie Architects has completed construction of the world's tallest indoor waterfall in Singapore's Jewel Changi Airport. Featuring a lush indoor forest and a green trail of airport amenities, the Jewel Changi Airport was designed to reinvent the concourse as a public attraction. The project was built with a torus-shaped glass dome the includes an oculus at its center. Dubbed the Rain Vortex, the oculus allows water to cascade into the airport.
Skidmore Owings and Merrill have unveiled their design for the Kempegowda International Airport Terminal 2 in Bengaluru, India. The new air travel hub for the region, the SOM terminal reimagines the airport as a landscaped, serene transportation experience, conceived by the airport commission as a “terminal within a garden.” The project’s first phase of construction is scheduled to be completed in March 2021, when it will serve 25 million annual passengers.
Safdie Architects have published an update of their iconic Jewel Changi Airport, as construction continues in Singapore. Featuring the world’s tallest indoor waterfall, a lush indoor forest, and a green trail of airport amenities, the scheme is set to open on April 17th of this year.
Jewel Changi Airport seeks to reinvent the public concourse not just as an in-between space for travelers, but as a major public attraction. Public transit form the city passes through the city and the large garden and shopping space within the central dome establishes it as a node for public gathering. In the future, an event space on the north side of the park will host public events for up to 1000 people.
Rwanda’s largest publicly funded project, Bugesera International Airport is on track to be the first certified green building in the region. A few pieces of this net zero emission complex include: a 30,000 square metre passenger terminal, 22 check-in counters, ten gates, and six passenger boarding bridges. Funded by Public Private Partnership, the project is cost estimated at $414 million USD. The international hub was only one of several initiatives discussed by the Africa Green Growth Forum (AGGF) in Kigali at the end of last year.
Five design teams have been selected to present their ideas for the Chicago O'Hare Airport Global Terminal and Global Concourse expansion. The designs are on display at an exhibition opened by Mayor Rahm Emanuel at the Chicago Architecture Center. Teams include Fentress-EXP-Brook-Garza, Foster Epstein Moreno, Studio ORD, SOM and Santiago Calatrava. Known as O’Hare 21, the project represents O’Hare’s first major overhaul in 25 years.
Airport architecture is a complex typology in which to innovate. Restrictive technical, security, and circulatory requirements force designs along limited (and precedented) paths; little budget is left over to create space for respite, let alone beauty.
Which makes the central space of Safdie Architect's design for Singapore's Changi Airport all the more unusual. Jewel Changi Airport reinvents the public concourse not just as an in-between space for travelers, but as a major public attraction. Public transit form the city passes through the city and the large garden and shopping space within the central dome establishes it as a node for public gathering. In the future, an event space on the north side of the park will host public events for up to 1000 people.
Blossoming alongside the iconic Gherkin building, Foster + Partners' Tulip Tower has been planning to join London's skyline since they released their proposal earlier in November. However, construction of the1,000-foot tower has been halted until officials can determine its impact on aircraft radar systems at London City airport, six miles away. Featuring mobile gondolas in the form of three-meter wide glass spheres intended for visitor rides on an elliptical journey around the tower, the proposed viewing platform is potentially highly problematic.
Studio Fuksas has won the competition to design the new Gelendzhik Airport in Gelendzhik, Russia. Gelendzhik is considered the third most popular resort city on the Black Sea coast. Prioritizing the landscape and an interior garden of local pine trees, the project is set to become the new gateway into the city. Inspired by the flight of birds when they change direction, the airport was made to be a new landmark for Gelendzhik.
This article was originally published on June 16, 2016. To read the stories behind other celebrated architecture projects, visit our AD Classics section.
Built in the early days of airline travel, the TWA Terminal is a concrete symbol of the rapid technological transformations which were fueled by the outset of the Second World War. Eero Saarinen sought to capture the sensation of flight in all aspects of the building, from a fluid and open interior, to the wing-like concrete shell of the roof. At TWA’s behest, Saarinen designed more than a functional terminal; he designed a monument to the airline and to aviation itself.
This AD Classic features a series of exclusive images by Cameron Blaylock, photographed in May 2016. Blaylock used a Contax camera and Zeiss lenses with Rollei black and white film to reflect camera technology of the 1960s.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has unveiled an updated $13 billion plan to transform John F. Kennedy International Airport into a “world-class 21st-century airport.” The scheme will add two major international terminals at the North and South sides, increasing airport capacity by 4 million square feet and 15 million annual passengers.
The plans are derived from a 2017 masterplan led by Grimshaw Architects and Mott MacDonald, which sought to combine the airport’s eight disparate terminal sites into one unified system.
For 40 years, Paul Andreu was among the world's foremost airport design experts. Reflecting on this before the turn of the millennium, he stated that architectural historians of the future might consider the 1990s as “the age of the air terminal.” But shortly after this, he left the arena of airport design to focus on other large projects, many of them in China. In this interview, the latest of Vladimir Belogolovsky's “City of Ideas” series, Andreu explains why he made the switch and shares his thoughts on how good architecture is made—saying it often depends more on what you don't tell your client than what you do.
Paul Andreu: Before we start, I must explain something. I am an architect and engineer. For a long time I was not an independent architect but worked at and then was the head of airport works at Aéroports de Paris Ingénierie or ADPi, a subsidiary of Aéroports de Paris (ADP). This public establishment is not only in charge of the planning, design, and operation of three Paris-region airports, but is also involved in airport works all around the world, as well as other large-scale architectural projects. First, we did airports in France, then in the Middle East and Africa, then in China and all over Asia, and then we developed projects in other parts of the world. Most of the time we developed our projects from concept all the way through construction; although once we did just the concept for Kansai airport on a specially built island in the Bay of Osaka. As you know, it was designed by Renzo Piano and I consulted for him on function and circulation aspects.
In an effort to maximize Istanbul’s potential of becoming a bustling regional hub, Transport Minister Binali Yildirim has released a request for proposals to construct and operate what could potentially be one of the world's largest airports. With the Ataturk airport - Turkey’s largest airport which handled nearly 45 million passengers last year - steadily reaching capacity and limited by land restrictions, the new $9 billion dollar, six-runway airport promises to expand the country’s aviation capacity with the potential of handling 150 million yearly passengers.
“The new airport project will be bigger than any other in Turkey and will be part of our plan to build a new city on the Black Sea coast,” Yildirim said, according to Bloomberg.
More after the break.
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.jpg?1546710181 "© Safdie Architects")
.jpg?1488828506 "Charles-de-Gaulle airport, Terminal II, modules A & B, Paris, 1972-1982. Image © Labo ADP")
