The Mile-High Club

Publishers DOM-Verlag recently stated in the form of a new book on airports as a building type: "Airports, as pivotal points and linchpins, are the gateways to urban regions, as well as showcases to the world. They could be deemed flagship places for ambitious urban-development projects. However, rarely do built-reality and design requirements collide with each other as much as they do in the vicinity of large airports.” (1)

It has long been a truism that airports have mutated into shopping centres with excellent transport links, dominated by brand worlds. Here, great significance is attached to time. If, however, it is true that “time is money”, then this raises, above all, the question “For whom?” For airport operators in any event. They are trying to make moving through bars, restaurants, shops and advertising as pleasant as possible. The leitmotif of such amenities is additional revenue. Ergo, anything else only distracts from this. This makes things hard for architecture; even more difficult than at stations these days (where what matters more than ever before is how much money can be earned in the arrival and departure areas). The big difference is that people experience trains in the station at first hand much more than aircraft in airports.

The year 1981 as the zero hour for airports as a building type
When the decision was taken in the UK in 1981 to build – besides Heathrow and Gatwick – a third airport, Stansted, for London’s civilian air traffic (London City Airport opened later in 1987), the contract was awarded to Norman Foster. The choice of architect – an experienced pilot – turned out to be a stroke of luck, as this decision resulted in a moment of glory for the romance of air travel: it was a move away from concrete bunkers, whose corridors remind one of prisons and in which the alleged guests barely ever see their destination, i.e. their plane.

In Stansted, everything was suddenly different. Transparency was the top priority for an airport building that, even on arrival, celebrates the view of the airfield. But this is not only thanks to the specific atmosphere, created by glass, the dominant building material, but also because the architect and the engineer Peter Rice made technology invisible wherever possible. The artifice succeeded with a 36 m x 36 m grid, whose roof elements, resting on their tips like a pyramid, seem to float high above people’s heads. Numerous service-distribution systems are housed in the supports on which these roof elements rest: indirect lighting, ventilation, water, the electricity supply and telecommunications. It may be said that Stansted Airport has redefined this type of building.

Bigger, faster, further
The start of Stansted’s construction in 1981 can be claimed to be a “zero hour” as, since then, almost all projects of high-tech architects can be described – albeit in the form of a journalistic simplification – as the “Goldberg Variations” of the canon defined by Norman Foster. And if it wasn’t possible to celebrate flying everywhere (due, for example, to the size of the project), all the projects carried out by Foster, Grimshaw, Piano and Rogers do contrast with the construction of airports before Stansted and seek constantly to expand the repertoire in accordance with the technical possibilities available.

Nevertheless, by the year 2000, only six airport projects had been awarded to the offices of London’s high-tech architects. Over the first 15 years of the new millennium, 16 were, at any rate, added to this, i.e. more than one a year. What is striking in all this is that, compared to projects in Europe, it takes barely half the time to realise such complex projects in Asia. Even when being interviewed years later for the BBC Four documentary “The Brits who Built the Modern World”, it was still clear to see the amazement on the face of Mouzhan Majidi, who headed up Foster + Partners’ Beijing project, at the tens of thousands of workers who had been active on the construction site.

One key factor in the success enjoyed by Foster, Grimshaw, Rogers & co. is not least the close partnership with the engineers involved that exists from the outset. And one should in no way forget that only two of the three agencies are represented on the fifth continent – and then only for a few years now (Grimshaw Architects and RSHP).

And if Renzo Piano seemed to have already lost his desire to carry out such gigantic projects when working on Kansai Airport, which opened in 1994, it might have had something to do with the complex difficulties in wresting an airport from the sea. Nonetheless, it was an evolutionary story that, at the time, was documented in a feature-length film (UK's Channel 4) and which is well worth seeing; it’s even more exciting than some of the thrillers broadcast during primetime. Yet, all this is relevant to scarcely more than 20 airports around the world, being projects that head up various top-ten awards. And they’ve done so for years – recognised, as they are, as a benchmark for airport architecture. That should give the roughly remaining 98% of the people in charge cause for thought.

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(1) Johanna Schlaack: Flughafen und Airea – Impulsgeber für Stadtregionen (276 pp, 270 illustrations, softcover) (DOM publishers Berlin)

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High-tech-architecture airports: a chronology

1981 Foster + Partners: Great Britain, London Stansted Airport (completed in 1991)

1988 Rogers, Stirk, Harbour + Partners: Great Britain, Heathrow Terminal 5 (completed in 2008)

1988 Renzo Piano Building Workshop: Japan, Kansai International Airport (completed in 1994)

1992 Foster + Partners: China, Hong Kong International Airport Chep Lak Kok (completed in 1998)

1993 Grimshaw + Partners: Great Britain, London Heathrow (ongoing; various extensions)

1997 Rogers, Stirk, Harbour + Partners: Spain, Madrid-Barajas Airport (completed in 2005)

2002 Grimshaw + Partners: Switzerland, Landside Center Zurich (completed in 2004)

2003 Foster + Partners: China, Beijing Capital International Airport (completed in 2008)

2005 Foster + Partners: Jordan, Queen Alia International Airport (completed in 2012)

2006 Foster + Partners: USA, Spaceport America (completed in 2014)

2007 Grimshaw + Partners: Russia, Pulkovo Airport St. Petersburg (completed in 2014)

2009 Grimshaw + Partners: South Korea, Incheon International Airport (completed in 2013)

2009 Grimshaw + Partners: Great Britain, London Stansted Airport, Generation 2

2010 Rogers, Stirk, Harbour + Partners: China, Beijing Capital International Airport (completed in 2013)

2011 Foster + Partners: Panama, Tocumen Aeropuerto International (under construction)

2011 Foster + Partners: Great Britain, Thames Hub

2011 Foster + Partners: Kuwait, Kuwait international Airport (under construction)

2013 Rogers, Stirk, Harbour + Partners: France, Lyon-Saint Exupéry Airport Terminal 1 (under construction)

2014 Grimshaw + Partners und Haptic Architects: Turkey, Istanbul New International Airport (under construction)

2014 Foster + Partners und FR-EE Architects: Mexico, Mexico City International Airport