Less than five years after the opening of Georgia’s Kutaisi ‘King David the Builder’ International Airport, rapidly increasing usage (from 12,915 passengers a year in 2012 to more than 300,000 in 2016) has prompted the airport to begin plans for an expansion that could serve as many as 1,000,000 passengers by 2020.
To achieve these goals, the airport has returned to the architects who designed the original structure, UNStudio (with local architects Artstudio Project), to develop a unique airport concept featuring terraced waiting areas and a rooftop viewing garden.
Foster + Partners has won the competition to design a new extension to Marseille Airport that will allow the building to process up to 12 million passengers a year. The 2-phase design will add a new central pavilion to the existing building—which comprises the original 1960s structure designed by Fernand Pouillon, and a 1992 extension by Richard Rogers—and a new pier to provide access to the planes.
Aerial Futures: Leading Edge is lively, provocative and interdisciplinary symposium examining the architecture, technologies and cultures of the contemporary airport. Curated by PLANE—SITE and free to attend, this two-day event understands the airport as a choreographed topography of hypermobility, information and cultures, defining how we travel, trade and connect with each other. It marks the threshold between land and sky, as well as sovereign territories. The airport — what the philosopher Giorgio Agamben describes as a ‘zone of exception’ where the ordinary rules no longer apply — is where the definitive issues of the 21st century play out.
When in 2015 Zaha Hadid Architects and ADP Ingeniérie unveiled designs for the "world's largest airport passenger terminal" in Beijing, much of the political maneuvering to allow it live up to its claim remained unclear. But the situation has since changed, Bloombergreports, with the Chinese authorities designating this new terminal—which will compete with the capital's existing airport—as "the hub for members of the SkyTeam alliance."
https://www.archdaily.com/874449/why-zaha-hadid-architects-beijing-mega-airport-is-now-set-to-become-the-worlds-largest-aviation-hubAD Editorial Team
The world’s largest indoor waterfall is currently being built in Singapore’s new Jewel Changi Airport extension. Designed by Safdie Architects, the spheroid-shaped dome will be a new luxury lifestyle destination for one of the world’s busiest airports and is a feat of engineering and sustainability. At approximately 134,000 sqm in size, the Jewel offers a range of facilities including airport services, indoor gardens, shopping and leisure attractions – including a canopy park in the upper levels of the dome.The 40m-tall waterfall is designed by water design firm WET, whose commissions include the Bellagio fountains and Burj Khalifa. Dubbed the Rain Vortex, the ambitious cascade will be the centerpiece for the project’s “Forest Valley” urban garden.
The team consisting of ALA Architects, HKP Architects and Ramboll Finland has won an invited competition for the renovation and expansion of Helsinki Airport’s Terminal 2 with their entry titled “City Hall.” Organized by Finnish airport operator Finavia, the competition asked four international firms to create a new airport plan centered around a reenvisioned terminal that will allow the airport to efficiently serve up to 20 million passengers per year.
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.
Aerial Futures, Grounded Visions: Shaping the Airport Terminal of Tomorrow was a two-day symposium held in October 2016 as part of the European Cultural Center's collateral event at the 2016 Venice Biennale. It encouraged discussion about the future of air travel from the perspectives of architecture, design, technology, culture and user experience. The event featured presentations and discussions by the likes of airport architect Curtis Fentress, Nelly Ben Yahoun, Donald Albrecht, Director of the Museum of the City of New York; Anna Gasco, post-doctoral researcher at the ETH-Future Cities Laboratory in Singapore; Jonathan Ledgard, co-founder of the Droneport Project; and Ashok Raiji, Principal at Arup New York.
https://www.archdaily.com/803677/aerial-futures-grounded-visions-the-airport-terminal-of-tomorrowAD Editorial Team
New York City’s busiest airport is about to receive a major overhaul.
Proposed by New York governor Andrew Cuomo, the plan calls for a $10 billion renovation to New York City’s busiest airport, transforming the facility into a “a unified, interconnected, world-class’ complex.”
Shenzhen Airport Satellite Concourse, China, by Aedas. Image Courtesy of Aedas
Aedas have recently won two international competitions to design international airport buildings: the Shenzhen Airport Satellite Concourse and Hong Kong International Airport Third Runway Passenger Building.
In recent years, Aedas have emerged as a leader in airport design, as they are also currently working on the Hong Kong International Airport Terminal 2 Expansion, and have previously worked on Hong Kong International Airport Midfield Concourse and North Satellite Concourse. With the two newly-won projects, Aedas hopes to reinforce their strength and growing influence in airport design.
The Aerial Futures symposium explores the current state of airport design and the future of this rapidly evolving architectural typology. The symposium brings thinkers and practitioners to Venice for two days, and is open to the general public.
Designing airports based on flight-inspired, aerodynamic forms is nothing new – in fact, that has been the concept behind some of history’s most beautiful airport terminals, such as Eero Saarinen’s iconic TWA Terminal in New York. But until now, no airport building has been quite so literal with its symbolism as the recently unveiled Ashgabat International Airport.
The new terminal building in Turkmenistan's capital takes the form of a soaring falcon, echoing the mascot of the national airline carrier. And at a cost of $2.3 billion USD, the structure has already drummed up some controversy – critics claim the building is much larger than needed to handle the country’s relative low traffic rates.
See some images of the bird-shaped building below.
Zaha Hadid Architects Vision. Image Courtesy of Heathrow Media Centre
Heathrow Airport is offering a first glimpse at commissioned expansion proposals by Zaha Hadid Architects, Grimshaw, HOK, and Benoy, that will shape the future of the global hub in London. The project brief called for "bold ideas to create a world-class sustainable airport that [will] deliver innovations in passenger service, integrate local communities, and showcase the best of British design." Challenging the architects to push the boundaries of what is the current airport typology, the proposals are meant to drive a step change in global airport design.
The following article was first published by Volume Magazine in their 47th issue, The System*. You can read the Editorial of this issue, How Much Does Your System Weigh?, here.
For the United Parcel Service (UPS), space is valued insofar as it grounds the socio-technical assemblages that secure the company’s economy of speed. Holding one of the largest airline fleets in the United States, UPS’s services range from delivering cargo for the US Air Force and e-commerce packages to relocating endangered animal species and partaking in disaster relief. It operationalizes logistics in the space between military and civilian domains and from the scale of cargo for large corporations to small packages for individuals. UPS runs a global logistics network that crosses more than 200 countries and territories and delivers about 17 million packages every day through its planetary ring of Shanghai-Shenzhen-Anchorage-Louisville-Cologne-Dubai.[1] It participates in the making of trans-border infrastructural systems and influences national politics towards the lifting of legal barriers to transnational trade. Yet what makes UPS significant is not its volume of shipment, infrastructural capacity, or magnitude of operational precision, but rather its resiliency and acute performance within the tides of uncertainty.
Following the selection of Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners' proposal for the TaiwanTaouyuan International Airport as the winning design, UNStudio has released their own proposal, which received 2nd place. Called the “most innovative design concept” and the design that the jury “wanted to experience the most” by Michael Sparks (jury member and Dean and Professor at Syracuse University), the proposal, with a design team headed by Ben Van Berkel, re-imagines the scale of the airport typology. Read more about their shortlisted entry after the break.
.jpg?1488828506 "Charles-de-Gaulle airport, Terminal II, modules A & B, Paris, 1972-1982. Image © Labo ADP")
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