Airport News
Beijing's new international airport is a step closer to reality today following the release of the designs for its much anticipated Terminal 1.
ADP Ingénierie (ADPI), the wholly-owned subsidiary of Aéroports de Paris subsidiary which won the international competition to design the complex, claims that it was inspired by Chinese architectural traditions.
Located at Daxing, 60 kilometres south of Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, the new Beijing International Airport wil eventually have seven runways and the capacity to handle over 100mppa making it one of the largest airports in the world.
Upon opening in late 2018, Terminal 1 will boast a 7.5 million square feet surface area and three mile-long façade, ensuring that it is initially capable of accommodating up to 45mppa.
The first planned expansion phase will raise that capacity to 72 million passengers per annum.
As the competition winner, ADP Ingénierie has fine tuned the design supported by Zaha Hadid Consortium as part of a mixed team managed by Beijing New Airport Construction Headquarters (BNAH).
Underpinning ADP Ingénierie's concept is the decision to stack the international and domestic levels vertically instead of spreading them out horizontally.
This innovation led to designing a compact terminal with a single passenger handling centre serving radial boarding piers.
The centralised single-terminal concept is said to ensure that it is efficient and economical to operate as well as offering an enhanced passenger experience courtesy of its many shops and restaurants and intermodal ground transportation facilities.
Given the terminal’s compact design, the distance between the terminal centre and the farthest boarding gate is around 650 yards, less than Asian and European terminals with similar capacity.
According to ADPi, passengers can easily find their way within the open interior layout of the terminal, gravitating naturally to the grand skylight central area where shops and services are located, and then walking straight ahead to their gate.
ADPi says that it was inspired by Chinese architectural traditions and as such has reshaped many symbols in a contemporary style, which it claims will result in a modern design that blends naturally into its surroundings.
The goal, it reveals, was to create an iconic airport "reflecting unprecedented levels of environmental management and sustainability to bolster the airport’s leading low carbon status."
