Students from North Carolina State University's College of Design worked alongside architect Curtis Fentress to design several concept airport terminals of the future. The students focused on five major global destinations, and the project lasted five to six years.
The article in which these five airport terminal concepts are presented is here. As an airport planner, I had a lot to say about these. The conclusion that I came to is that most of these students, who are architecture students, do not understand that an airport is a purpose-driven facility, and consequently, one cannot simply design whatever interesting concept is in mind and call it an airport. It disappoints me that these students spent so long on concepts that would absolutely be futile, when the problems with their concepts could have been fixed if they had consulted anyone who knew anything about aviation. It further disappoints me that AAAE endorsed these concepts by distributing the article to their mailing list.
0. Overall website presentation.
Neither sentence beginnings nor proper nouns have capitalization. I get that architects tend to do "artsy" things like that. Still strange to me.
1. Shiraz, Iran
It's not clear whether the students who created this concept intended for this airport to be a commercial service airport or a city-center corporate/general aviation airport. If the former, providing sufficient vertical circulation capacity for passengers would be an immense challenge. If the latter, the facility would only be accessed by a select elite, which seems like an unfair use of what would have to be a gargantuan infrastructure investment. In addition to the enormous upfront costs required to elevate an entire airfield, any facility expansion would require expansion of the elevated airfield, which would also be immensely expensive.
Operationally, a 300' foot runway is not adequate for any aircraft type in existence. No consideration was given to the jet blast from departing aircraft; this is one reason why terminals are generally not right behind runways. Also, how in the world do aircraft land at this airport?
The terminal itself seems to contain most of the necessary functional areas...in order to serve maybe 300 peak-hour passengers. Not very impressive.
2. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
The description provided for this concept includes this: "Runway is large enough for 8 aircraft to line up side-by-side. This improves take-off time." This is so wrong I don't even know where to begin.
The footprint of this entire facility is enormous and requires tons of flat land. Did the students identify a location in Rio where such a facility could even be built? Also, the passenger walking times would be absurdly high. The overhead images show the airport's expanse, and the interior renderings show a sweeping terminal with high ceilings and large windows. The terminal may have an abundance of "walkable surfaces", but passengers would likely not be willing to walk for miles through it.
Three of the five concepts do not seem to understand that a passenger terminal consists of more than just boarding gates, concessions, and decor/landscaping; that is, that a terminal requires many passenger processing areas and back-of-house systems. This is the first of the three.
3. Wellington, New Zealand
In my opinion, this concept is the closest to viable because it has considered the inclusion of the essentials of a passenger terminal in its design. That is, this concept explicitly depicts areas such as security, check-in, baggage claim, automated people mover (APM) system, etc. That being said, there are a few items that need refining:
- The APM is definitely within the taxiway object free area.
- Why bother having the security checkpoint after people exit the APM? That makes the APM publicly accessible (or, on the landside), so this system may need to be built to provide capacity for non-passengers. Alternatively, the security checkpoint might be located off-site before passengers board the APM.
- If the APM is deliberately intended to be on the landside in order to draw the public to the facility, then why are all the concessions post-security? The non-traveling public cannot access these concessions.
I don't really understand the under-the-building aircraft circulation. Especially in this concept, it looks very much like a free-for-all. It's also not clear to me what the advantage is over the traditional lead-in and back-out aircraft parking system. In fact, with this under-the-building flow, the passenger enplaning/deplaning capacity is actually decreased because you negate the option of having a double-loaded concourse.
I found some of the choices of concessionaires to be amusing. Ducati, for instance. It seems unlikely to me that passengers would decide to purchase a motorcycle shortly after clearing security. To the gate agent, "Yes, hi, I'd like to check this, please." (More realistically, this Ducati shop would be a showroom. A passenger purchasing a Ducati here would give a down-payment and then have it shipped to them or pick it up later at another location.)
And, finally: RIP Pan Am. RIP Concorde.
4. Nanjing, China
This is the second of the three concepts that does not grasp that a passenger terminal consists of more than just boarding gates, concessions, and decor/landscaping.
The parallel runway centerlines are definitely spaced closer together than 700 feet, so they could not be operated simultaneously under any conditions. Just build one runway.
This concept also has the aircraft-circulation-under-the-building thing. The aircraft flow in this concept appears much more controlled than in Wellington because of the presence of centerlines/lead-in lines. However, in this concept, gate delays could wreak havoc on this flow. If an aircraft is held at a gate, other aircraft taxiing behind it may blocked from reaching their parking positions.
The flower-petal concourse design is interesting, but passenger walking distances would be nightmarish and infuriating. A passenger might spatially be 30 feet from their destination (e.g., one level higher/lower), but they might have to walk the entire length of a "petal" to travel that 30 feet. This frustration would become amplified for connecting passengers, or for passengers whose flights have gate changes, who could walk up to half of the entire length of the facility to reach their next gate.
The third image from the left depicts the interior design of the building. To be sure, it's interesting, but it is a non-sequitur when compared to the rest of the facility renderings. There is no apparent connection between the building interior and exterior. How does the viewer know this interior design concept even belonged to the same airport project?
5. Toamasina, Madagascar
This is the third of the three concepts that does not grasp that a passenger terminal consists of more than just boarding gates, concessions, and decor/landscaping.
The foundation for this concept is ill-conceived and almost laughable. The image on the left explains the premise. The ocean and the land lie on the "nature axis" and...a flight and a flight... (?) lie on the "flight axis". The intersection of these two axes is where the "garden of flight" exists, which I guess is the passenger terminal. The significance of these axes is unclear, as is the rationale for why a "garden of flight" is what arises from the intersection of the two axes.
In this concept, aircraft are nowhere to be seen, except for in the third image, when airborne aircraft are literally visible inside the terminal. Apparently these aircraft can conduct "vertical takeoffs", but they look an awful lot like regional jets. These aircraft appear to have the capacity to carry maybe twelve passengers each, and the scale of these aircraft in the rendering appears off when compared to the walking passengers.
It appears that after waiting in the boarding gate areas, passengers board suspended APM cars that take them to their aircraft to board. However, it is not clear where the passengers actually exit the boarding gate areas to get on the APM vehicles. In addition, each APM vehicle appears to have the capacity to carry about five to eight passengers.
Such an APM system would be extremely inefficient, as each departing flight would require a fleet of APM vehicles to transport all the passengers. A 170-seat aircraft (e.g., approximately a Boeing 737-800) at 85% load factor, for instance, would likely require between 20 and 30 APM vehicles. A 300-seat aircraft (e.g., approximately an Airbus A350-900) at 85% load factor might require between 30 and 50 APM vehicles. Multiply this by the number of simultaneous departing flights, and the number of vehicles required would be enormous.
* * *
Not to rag on architects, but this is why we don't let them plan airports solo. Airport planning is interdisciplinary, requiring a balance of perspectives, and it is more than just designing an aesthetically pleasing or structurally adventurous building.
No comments:
Post a Comment