FUKSAS COMPLETES TERMINAL 3 AT SHENZHEN BAO’AN INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

The terminal – the largest single public building to be built to date in Shenzhen - encompasses 63 contact gates, with a further 15 remote gates and significant retail space.

It will increase the capacity of the airport by 58%, allowing the airport to handle up to 45 million passengers per year. The sculptural 500,000 sq.m. / 5,381,955 sq.ft (approx.) terminal, evokes the image of a manta ray and features a striking internal and external double ‘skin’ honeycomb motif that wraps the structure.

At 1.5 km long, with roof spans of up to 80m, honeycomb shaped metal and glass panels punctuate the façade of the terminal allowing natural light to filter through. On the interior, the terminal is characterized by distinctive white conical supporting columns that rise to touch the roof at a cathedral-like scale.

The focal point of the design is the concourse located at the intersection of the building. Consisting of three levels – departure, arrivals and services – they vertically connect to create full height voids, allowing natural light to filter from the highest level down to the lowest.

Studio Fuksas has created an interior, as striking and elegant as the exterior. The spatial concept is one of fluidity and combines two different ideas: the idea of movement and the idea of pause.

Carefully considering the human experience of such environments, Studio Fuksas focused on processing times, walking distances, ease of orientation, crowding, and availability of desired amenities.

Stand-out features of the interior design include stylized white ‘trees’ that serve as air conditioning vents, and check-in ‘islands’, gates and passport-check areas with a stainless steel finish that beautifully reflect the honeycomb patterns from above.

The honeycomb motif translates through into many aspects of the interior and at different scales – from the larger retail boxes to smaller 3D imprints in the wall cover. 

The Studio Fuksas designed Terminal 3 is of critical importance to the future of Shenzhen as a booming business and tourist destination, and will bring benefits to the region as a whole.

Studio Fuksas are engaged on two further phases of the airport extension, scheduled to complete in 2025 and 2035 respectively.

Location: Bao’an District, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China 
Architects: Massimilianoand Doriana Fuksas 
Architect of record: BIAD (Beijing Institute of Architectural Design), Beijing 
Interior design: Fuksas Design 
Structures, façade and parametric design: Knippers Helbig Engineering 
Lighting consulting: Speirs & Major Associates, Edinburgh, London 
Developer: Shenzhen Planning Bureau; Shenzhen Airport (Group) Co., Ltd. 
Contractor: China State Construction Engineering Corporation, Beijing 
Size: 500,000 sq.m. / 5,381,955 sq.ft (approximately) 
Cost: 734,000,000 Euros 
Year: 2013 
Client: Shenzhen Airport (Group) Co., Ltd.

KUTAISI INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT BY UNSTUDIO

UNStudio's Kutaisi 'King David the Builder' International Airport in Georgia has been completed.

The new Kutaisi 'King David the Builder' International Airport - which serves domestic and international flights for use by tourists, national politicians and international diplomats - incorporates both Georgia’s historic landscape and its architecture.

The architecture of the terminal refers to a pavilion; a gateway, in which a clear structural layout creates an all-encompassing and protective volume. The volume is structured around a central exterior space which is used for departing passengers.

The transparent space around this central point is designed to ensure that flows of passengers are smooth and that departure and arrival flows do not coincide.

Both the exterior corner detail and the so called 'umbrella' structure within the terminal building – which operates as a roundabout for passenger flows - operate as the two main architectural details around which all of the airport functions are organised.

UNStudio’s design comprises the full airport development, including a revision of the runway, the master plan for the landscape and planned future development thereof, the terminal building, offices, a meteorological station and the air traffic control tower.

The 55m high Air Traffic Control Tower and its supporting office/operational building is designed to complement the design of the terminal. The traffic control cabin on the top level forms the focal point of the tower, with a 360 degrees view on the surrounding landscape.

A spacious and comfortable interior ensures a workspace for 4-8 operators with optimal concentration. The exterior of the tower is clad with a perforated skin on a concrete core to use wind for ventilation purposes.

LED Light in-between the skin and the core enhance the beacon effect of the tower at dusk and dawn by changing colour whenever there is a fluctuation in wind speed.

Ben van Berkel: "The design for the new airport embraces the traveller by embodying the circumstance of the site. Moments of both leaving and returning are celebrated by the large span, open spaces and high ceiling of the terminal structure - reflecting the ways in which such gestures were employed in the great railway stations of the past."

Location: Kutaisi, Georgia 
Architects: UNStudio 
Project Team: Ben van Berkel, Caroline Bos, Gerard Loozekoot with Frans van Vuure and Filippo Lodi, Roman Kristesiashvili, Tina Kortmann, Wendy van der Knijff, Kristoph Nowak, Machiel Wafelbakker,  Gustav Fagerström, Thomas Harms, Deepak Jawahar, Nils Saprovskis, Patrik Noome 
Structural consultant: MTM kft. 
MEP consultant: SMG-SISU kft. 
Landscape: OR else 
Airport planning: Arup Aviation 
Sustainability: Arup 
Terminal advisor on interior & art: Inside Outside / Petra Blaisse 
Light: Primo Exposures 
Local architect: Studio ARCI 
Acoustics: SCENA akoestisch adviseurs 
Wind-testing: Peutz 
Cost and management: Davis Langdon 
Visualisation: Moka Studio 
Building surface: terminal 4,500 m2, Control Tower and offices 1,800 m2 
Building site: 12,000 m2 
Year: 2013 
Client: United Airports of Georgia 
Photographer: Nakaniamasakhlisi, Tbilisi

ROSTOV-ON-DON AIRPORT BY TWLEVE ARCHITECTS

Following a two stage international design competition Twelve Architects has been confirmed as the preferred architects for the £607 million airport terminal hub for Southern Russia that will serve football fans visiting the 2018 World Cup.

The Yuzhny Greenfield Airport is funded by the Airports of the Regions, part of the Renova Group, the largest airport holding company in Russia. The terminal will meet an initial demand of 5 million passengers a year and be delivered across two phases as part of a wider transport development programme. 

The Masterplan designed by Twleve Architects retains the location of the buildings as defined in the client brief and the design makes reference to the River Don which is the origin of the city, through the design of the central landscape feature that connects the airport terminal to the train station, car park, hotel and office buildings.

The concept for the airport terminal is inspired by the analogy that an airport is the ‘sky-bridge’ that connects cities and countries together. This is realised through the design of the roof which is formed from a series of elegant bridge arches.

The division of the international and domestic zones within the terminal is represented by the orientation of the roof arches and an 8m wide, glazed skylight. The expression of the three larger arches celebrate the principal routes for passengers when going through the arrival and departure process and also provide covered zones to the drop off and adjacent hotel and business centre.

The terminal building is organised on an orthogonal and repetitive 16x16m grid and has been designed to easily accommodate future expansion. The roof is composed from four repeated elements arranged in an asymmetric composition.

Our design responds to local climate to create an environmentally sensitive solution that embraces passive design and renewable energies and responds to both the summer and winter climate. The Wider masterplan will include offices, a hotel, business centre and a high-speed railway station that will connect Moscow, Adler and Rostov-on-Don.