Content area
Full text
Designing and constructing airports, already a most complicated building type, has become a constant exercise in adapting to change. Nobody could have predicted the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which devastated the already depressed aviation industry, frightened the flying public, and necessitated a host of new security procedures and architectural changes to support them.
Continuing terrorist threats, repercussions from the deregulation of the aviation industry in 1978, recession and high diesel fuel prices have brought some major U.S. airlines to the brink of bankruptcy recently. That sent airport construction spiraling downward, to a record-low level of just 25 million sq ft in 2002 and still lower over 2003, according to McGraw-Hill Construction's third quarter 2003 report, The Outlook for Miscellaneous Nonresidential Buildings. ENR and Architectural Record are divisions of McGraw-Hill Construction.
But there is cause for optimism, with contracts expected to average more than 9% annual gains between 2004-2006, the report states. Owners and airlines that shelved plans are rethinking options especially since Congress approved a four-year, $60-billion aviation bill last month that authorizes $14.2 billion for federal airport grants and $2 billion for a new airport security grant program (ENR 12/1 p. 13).
Two of the most talked-about trends--building more airports for smaller craft and adapting existing airports for big- ger ones--are happening almost simultaneously.
Planners are gearing up for super-jumbo jets which will carry up to 600 or more passengers at today's speeds, including the Airbus A380, scheduled to arrive on the scene in 2005. The 261-ft wingspans will require airports to build new facilities to accommodate them, predicts C. Patrick Askew, senior vice president of Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum, St. Louis.
To that end, Perkins & Will is designing two concourses at the gigantic Dubai International Airport. Perkins & Will principal G. William Doerge explains that "in Dubai we are designing certain gates in Concourse II to allow boarding and deplaning to occur on two levels."
Evan Futterman, aviation services chairman for HNTB, Kansas City, says several U.S. airports are preparing for the A380 in future designs. Los Angeles International Airport anticipates up to six A380s. The huge planes will require reconfiguring taxiways and double-decking holding bridges.
"It will affect airfield, parking and terminal design," says E. Vincent Hourigan, aviation business development...