The modern terminal

What is an airport?

Airports are large, complex and generally highly profitable industrial enterprises. They are
part of a nation’s essential transportation infrastructure, which, besides providing thousands
of jobs at the airport itself, supports a much wider area in social and economic terms. It has
been estimated that for every job at the airport a further one is created in the region. As
large industrial complexes airports consist primarily of:

 Runways and taxiing areas

 Air traffic control buildings
 Aircraft maintenance buildings
 Passenger terminals and car parks
 Freight warehouses

In the past, the airport structured these five principal activities into airside and landside
zones, all enclosed within security fence and served mainly by car or airline bus. Today,
however, the trend is towards more social, commercial and tourist development at airports,
with conference facilities, hotels and tourist information shops commonplace. In addition,
the airport is seen as part of an integrated transport system, connected not only by car and
bus but by mainline or underground railways.

[..]

Airports are major transport infrastructure projects at, above and below ground. They are
significant sources of pollution, and of environmental impact near and further afield, and a
major concentration of energy exchange. They are also cultural, social, economic, and
commercial points of exchange. In many ways the airport is a microcosm of the city – a
satellite that orbits at the edge of a major conurbation but which operates as an urban
entity almost on its own.

[..]

As airports become more complex and more interesting as a destination in their own right,
and as they take on more of the characteristics of the city they serve, there begin to emerge
other user groups. Mature airports have extensive restaurant, retail and leisure facilities
manned and often used by people who do not belong to the three principal groups. Also,
there are security police, fire and ambulance staff. Many large airports have become leisure
destinations, attracting people on day trips from further afield. The functional and social
diversity of the modern airport leads inevitably to a blurring of the organizational clarity of
the buildings – particularly the terminal itself. In some ways a large modern airport performs
like a new town. Conceptually, an airport is structured like a town, with a centre (where the
terminal building is located), industrial areas (hangars and warehouses), an effective road
system, and residential areas. Many airports ape new towns in their use of public art,
landmark buildings and employment of dense corridors of tree planting at their edges and
along principal roads.

For the architect, the passenger terminal is the main airport building and opportunity for
architectural expression. Other structures, such as hangars and control towers, are
technological and structural challenges, but they do not provide the celebratory or
processional potential of the terminal. Functionally, the terminal is the building that divides
landside from airside: it establishes the boundary between the public realm and the private
estate of the airport. This division, expressed directly in the customs and baggage control
systems, allows the terminal to be the major organizational and control mechanism at the
airport. To cross the line between landside and airside is symbolic of the move from the
ground to the air. Ticket controls, customs and immigration barriers, baggage extraction and
duty free lounges are all part of this transition. Similarly, the means of reaching the aircraft
via passenger piers or light rail systems is a further symptom crossing between landside and
airside.

[..]

If an airport is a self-contained urban entity not unlike a new town at the edge of a city, the
terminal buildings are its public buildings. They have much the same relationship to the
airport as shopping malls and commercial buildings have to the city. [..] Externally, the
terminal provides the means to spectate upon the aircraft gathered on aprons outside the
windows. Inside, the bustle of movement of people from different regions and at different
stages of their journey provides a further spectacle.

Chapter 2

[..]

The international airport is a modern kind of placeless city. It lacks the sense of geographical
justification that is evident in most urban areas. The big, busy, multinational airport derives
its logic from the distribution of world trade, the spatial pattern of international cities, and
the often irrational location of national boundaries. This has led some observers to contend
that the airport is a new type of city, perhaps the most coherent of a fresh generation of
post-industrial cities. In this the terminal building is its market place, cathedral and municipal
town hall all rolled into one.

The architecture of airports reflects the international flavour of modern air travel. There is a
sense of technological bravado balanced by national pride in airport design. Countries like to
express a modern efficient image through the vehicle of national airports in general and the
terminal buildings in particular.

[..]

The role of meaning, function and form in defining the architecture of terminals

In his A History of Building Types, written in 1976 Nikolaus Pevsner places the airport
terminal as an adjunct to the chapter on railway stations. The airport is seen as a twentieth-
century postscript to the essentially nineteenth-century history of transportation buildings,
of which the railway station is the prime example. [..]

More recent writers have taken a broader view of the taxonomy of building types, noting
that the evolution of new types is invariably in response to fresh programmatic
requirements and changing technologies. As travel has become faster, the phenomenon of
mass transportation has led to the emergence of new forms, of which the modern
international airport is an obvious example. Bigger buildings for faster movement lead
inevitably to the introduction of new construction techniques, which propel the evolutionary
process towards a new building species. Added to this, the concept of perpetual change and
dynamic growth charges the airport building with a responsibility towards structural and
spatial change, which further distances the terminal from the railway station. Whereas the
station evolved to meet a relatively stable (though unfolding) new functional programme,
the airport terminal is conceived as an almost temporary building, given 10-15 years. The
unpredictability of airports means that the functional life of the terminal is invariably shorter
than the built form houses. Though airport terminals share certain similarities with the
nineteenth-century railway station, they are so much part of the gestalt of late twentieth-
century life that they can no longer be considered as a postscript to the former building
type.

In understanding the airport terminal as a distinctive typology, it is important to grasp three

main formal elements that give it shape: the plan, the design of surfaces, and the handling of
light. The plan – the geometry of space, as it is sometimes described – establishes the spatial
and hierarchical composition. However, the design of the masses and their surfaces also
plays an important part. How the materials are used, and whether the surfaces reflect the
functional and socially infused meaning of the airport, are also key factors. Finally, light and
the play of light in an optical sense help to distinguish the airport terminal from other
related building types such as railway stations. The changing images in the complex
movement through a terminal begin to a ‘coalesce in the mind into a single sensation’. In
defining the architectural factors that give the airport terminal its ‘airportness’ – its sense of
typological identity – the compositional components of plan, mass and light are of
fundamental importance. These combine to give the function appropriate form and
meaning, which allow the terminal to be understood by its users, and which permit the
terminal to be recognized as a distinctive type of building by those who have yet to enter
into it.

This argument also allows function, meaning and form to have social value rather than
purely aesthetic value. The term ‘airport’ or ‘airport terminal’ is exclusively a twentieth-
century one; before the modern age no conception of the airport existed, and hence no
preconception of the design of the terminal building had occurred in the mind of architects.
By giving the airport a name one constructs a functional narrative, which allows designers to
conjure up appropriate forms. Without the naming of a new function there is little basis for
design or public recognition of the built consequences. Hence the word ‘airport’ leads to
spatial constructs that themselves carry social meaning. By removing ambiguity through the
close correspondence between function, meaning and form, there emerges a recognizable
body of building types, which society at large can recognize as airports. In this sense the
formal repertoire of architectural elements – plan, masses and surfaces, and light – gives
meaning to the built forms. Meaning does not exist within the functional narrative unless
accompanied by architectural forms; neither does meaning exist within built forms unless
they carry functional legitimacy. The earliest terminal buildings, such as Eero Saarinen’s TWA
Terminalat New York and his Dulles Terminal at Washington, or the more Miesian terminals
at O’Hare, Chicago designed at the same time by Naess and Murphy, were important
beginnings in helping to define the modern airport in a typological sense.
Chapter 9 - The terminal as a movement system

Passenger movement

Airline terminals are essentially movement systems. Two main flows occur – passenger and
baggage – and both move in two opposing currents: outwards and inwards. It is important
that architects recognize the imperative of movement in the allocation of space, the
ordering system of structure, and the handling of light. There is increasing pressure to
obstruct, deflect or slow the pace of movement in order to exploit services of one kind or
another. Revenue earned from concessions and other facilities provided in the terminal
should not be allowed to undermine the clear ordering of passenger concourses and other
key routes. Balancing the demands of architecture and commerce requires a sharing of
values between designers and airport managers. Bottlenecks in flows inevitably occur at
peak times, but it is better if these are the result of security checks or immigration control
rather than obstruction caused by poor design. On the journey through the terminal the
passenger is more interest concerns than those that are caused by predatory retailers.

Movement through the terminal needs to be landmarked. There are four principal ways to
achieve this: by space, by structure, by light, and by object.

Space

The definition of routes using different sizes or volumes of internal space helps the traveller
to know whether a particular corridor or concourse is a major or a minor one. The hierarchy
of routes through the terminal and the size of spaces need to correspond. Hence spacious
internal volumes such as the landside concourse gesture towards major gathering-spaces
used by all passengers passing through the terminal, while narrow corridors of single height
clearly mean emergency routes or access to toilets. The orchestration of space into several
recognizable hierarchies allows passengers to find their way around with the minimum of
fuss.

The size and the position of staircases and escalators should follow the same rules. Major
routes will ideally be marked by wide gracious staircases, with escalators facing the direction
of flow. The angle of lights, going and width of stairs and escalators should indicate the
degree of publicness or privateness of that particular route. Stairs with sharp doglegs, that
are poorly lit and meanly proportioned imply minor not major airport routes.

Internal space and the positioning of stairs and escalators are related factors. The
correspondence between them should both direct travellers along the principal routes of a
terminal and take them from one concourse level to another without confusion.

Structure

The role of the primary elements of structure – columns, walls and beams – is both to
support the terminal physically and to support the perception of major routes
psychologically. A row of columns in a concourse is doing more than merely holding up the
roof: they are guiding passengers through a complex space. Beams too can be used to
indicate a direction of flow or to provide scale in a large public area. Architectural structure
is a means by which direction can be indicated and the rhythms of movement can be
articulated.
The relative scale of structural elements should, like the management of interior space,
reflect directly the movement or use hierarchy of that part of the terminal. Large columns
obviously indicate large public space, small columns smaller ones. The principal route
through a terminal from landside to airside should be accompanied by structural elements
that, as at Kansai Airport, hint at the progression from ground to air. To exploit the aesthetic
as well as structural possibilities is to see the column, beam and wall as useful elements in
defining and articulating movement systems.

Light

Because they are detached buildings set in open landscapes, terminals are able to exploit
light more than most building types. Light, like space and structure, is a major tactile
material in its own right. Light to the terminal designer is more important than a question of
lighting levels alone. Light – that is, daylight and sunlight – should be moulded, manipulated
and directed with the sensitivity of a sculptor. Used in the correct fashion, light can be a
solid, expressive material to guide travellers through the complex changes of direction and
level encountered in a modern airline terminal.

In exploiting light, the designer needs to be conscious of the path of the sun. The orientation
of the terminal should, wherever possible, allow sunlight into the core of building. Sunlight
and structure used together allow the main concourse to be a central point of orientation
for all those using the airport. Light helps to articulate space and animate the structural
elements of a terminal, helping passengers in their perception of the building and uplifting
their spirit.

The issue of hierarchy mentioned already in the context of space and structure applies
equally well to light. The degree of light intensity helps to distinguish major routes from
minor routes through the terminal. Daylight and sunlight can both be exploited to signal a
principal staircase, the main departure lounge, or the central concourse.

Object

Object is the converse of space: the word is used to denote solid volumes within passenger
terminals. Objects embrace banks of check-in counters, enclosing walls of various kinds,
free-standing kiosks and lift shafts. Designers need to see ‘objects’ as orientating elements:
solid points of reference that interrupt vistas or limit the edges of space. These solid
elements contain functional space (staff offices, toilets, immigration control etc.), but their
role in the terminal is also perceptual. By designing the solid parts as positive features, the
architect can help passengers to understand the organization of the spaces of the terminal
building. Certain key objects, for instance, can be treated as sculptural elements punctuating
the free flow of space in the concourse. It may be possible, for example, to design the lift
shafts as landmark objects, thereby helping travellers to find the lifts and orientate
themselves between different parts of the building.

Many of the principles relating to the handling of space structure and light apply to objects.
The relationship between use hierarchy and object meaning needs to correspond: major
functions should be landmarked by major objects. Because airport terminals are mainly large
volumes of space in which objects occur, the design of the solid elements has particular
importance. Areas enclosed by walls (such as customs offices) have a function in defining the
limits of concourse areas, in directing people in the desired flow, and in establishing
navigation points in complex buildings.
Public art is, in many ways, a means by which object orientation can be reinforced. The use
of free standing sculpture in concourse areas can establish a point of reference, particularly
if it is located at, a crossroads in the passenger flow. Similarly, a mural attached to a wall can
give that wall extra significance in the perception of interior routes. Major volumes in the
terminal can be landmarked by a combination of light, structural expression and art. In
combination, the elements should leave passengers in little doubt about the hierarchies of
route and space in the terminal.

Integration of space, structure, light and object

The prime object of terminal design is to use all four elements together. The architect need
to orchestrate space, structure, light and object to express in the mind of the airport user
the organization in plan and section of the building. [..]