Archinect - News

New York announces funding and construction timeline for new Terminal 6 expansion at JFK

2022-11-22T16:57:00-05:00

A few months after ground was broken on the $9.5 billion New Terminal One project, New York Governor Kathy Hochul has announced the financing and approval of a new $4.2 billion Terminal 6 at JFK Airport that will serve as the final piece of the airport’s multi-year transformation upon completion in 2028.

The terminal will be developed in two phases beginning next year, with the first stage expected to open in 2026. It will have space for 10 gates in its 1.2-million-square-foot plan, with typical retail and dining options included along with an offering of touchless check-in technology, biometric security controls, and the space to accommodate for regulatory changes and further technology upgrades in the future.

JFK will demolish the aging Terminal 7 following the conclusion of the first phase of construction, and its current tenant British Airways will be relocated inside the newly-modernized Terminal 8, th...

Fentress Global Challenge invites students to push the boundaries for public architecture

2020-05-01T14:26:00-04:00

This post is brought to you by Fentress Architects

Despite a multitude of technological advances including video conferencing and drones, the proliferation of airports worldwide continues to be spurred on by global commerce and an unrelenting demand for travel.

While the airport terminal—conceived a century ago—is a relatively new architectural typology, it has since its inception held equal importance with quintessential civic buildings: city halls, courthouses, libraries, museums, and theaters. Yet, airports are uniquely complex and they are more than just high volume transportation hubs. Increasingly, airports are also workplaces, centers of commerce, recreational outlets, and cultural resources.

Fentress Global Challenge (FGC) is an annual international student design competition. Since its inception in 2011, thousands of entries from over 75 countries have competed for top honors. FGC represents an extraordinary exploration into the future of architecture, and in so doing, cont...

Breastfeeding pods are proliferating across America

2019-10-02T14:01:00-04:00

Thanks to the Friendly Airports for Mothers Act (FAM) passed in 2018, the number of private breastfeeding pods available to the general public has steadily increased over the last year. Passed as part of a comprehensive Federal Aviation Administration funding package, the FAM Act requires the nation's 61 "large and medium hub airports" to provide a private lactation area beyond the security zone of every airport terminal.

According to Mamava, a lactation pod manufacturer, the act requires that these lactation areas have a locking door, include a place to sit, and be accessible and usable by people with disabilities. The act also requires each pod to offer a table or flat surface as well as an electrical outlet and a sink or specialized sanitizing equipment. The act also requires that these spaces not be located within bathrooms.

ADA-compatible lactation pods are coming to many of America's airports. Image courtesy of Mamava.

Over the last year, the Port Authority of New York and Ne...

AirTrain price tag rises to $2 billion as LGA overhaul takes shape

2019-07-02T19:13:00-04:00

“These are expensive projects. There’s no question. But if we are to reap the benefits of mass transit, we have to provide mass transit that is attractive to individual travelers and their families,” said Rick Cotton, the executive director at the Port Authority, without explaining the rise in cost. “Experience shows that rail mass transit is the most attractive alternative, and we’re committed to provided that.”

While the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey works to implement an $8 billion overhaul of LaGuardia Airport, costs for a planned AirTrain link connecting the airport to regional mass transit continue to grow.

According to AM New York, when first proposed in 2014, the two-mile monorail was projected to cost $450 million to build. Now, five years later, the cost has ballooned to $2.05 billion, a 356-percent increase. Officials have not explained the reasons behind the sharp increase, but have indicated that most of the increases will come out of the Port Authority's coffers.

Rendering depicting the forthcoming concourse set to open fall 2019. Image courtesy of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s office.

If completed as planned, the two-mile AirTrain line could connect the Willets Point Long Island Rail Road and the No. 7 subway to the airport, establishing the first public transit link to LaGuardia.

The cost increase comes as new renderings are unveiled for the LaGuardia Airport expansio...

LAX ranked worst airport in the world; Safdie's new Singapore airport is best

2019-06-12T16:47:00-04:00

There are uglier airports and airports with fewer amenities; there are airports that are older and airports that are more rundown; there are airports with ruder staff and airports with cruder passengers. There are, without doubt, by almost all measures, worse airports in this world. Except by one measure—an exceedingly crucial measure. In fact, behind safety, it’s almost certainly the most important measure: getting in and getting out.

Fodor's Travel Guide has ranked Los Angeles International Airport as the worst airport in the world, due in large part to the "improbably stupid design of its catastrophic horseshoe motor-loop."

The airport's design is attributed to noted Los Angeles architect and urban planner William Pereira, who also designed Don Muang Airport in Bangkok, Thailand, Tehran International Airport in Iran, and Baghdad International Airport in Iraq, among others. The latter site features the same horseshoe design as LAX, while the two other airports are designed along linear, single-loaded paths. Like LAX, however, Don Muang Airport is designed with a double-decker arrangement that separates arrivals and departures. Don't tell Fodor's!

Safdie Architect's Jewel Changi Airport in Singapore is among the best in the world, Image courtesy Wikimedia user Matteo Morando.

The best airport on Fodor's list? Safdie Architects' recently-completed Jewel Changi Airport in Singapore, of course. The 1.46 million-squa...

Russia's historic wooden airports are still in use today

2018-09-12T14:47:00-04:00

This is the era of the glass and steel airport. As if made from the same mold, shiny, glittering terminals have become a status symbol for any city with aspirations. But all of this is a world away from the remoteness of Russia's Arctic regions and the Siberian wilderness [...] built in the mid-20th century when the Soviet Union saw in air transport a way to expand the state's reach to every corner of its territory, even if that meant little more than a dirt runway and a radio shack.

A collection of Russia's historic wooden airports are the antithesis of our current experience of most urban airports. Rather than immense glass and steel constructions, these old structures are made of simplistic wooden designs.

While many may look dilapidated, several are still in operation with regular airline service. Take a look at some of these unique transportation hubs below:

Mar-Kyuyel' Airport, located in Russia's Far East. Image: Russian Platinum.

Solovki Airport, located near Russia's Solovetsky Islands. Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Seymchan Airport, located in Magadan Oblast, Russia. Image: Sever.Aero.

Mezen Airport, located in Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia. Image: Shutterstock.

Check out the full collection of Russia's wooden airports here.

AERIAL FUTURES release a new video exploring integration of airports and cities

2018-06-27T14:28:00-04:00

AERIAL FUTURES, a non-profit think tank exploring innovation in the architecture of flight, have created a new film titled Urban Constellations looking at the relationship between a city and its airports. Using NYC as a case study, this video asks how fragmented pieces of infrastructure can be reimagined more holistically, in order to simultaneously improve air travel and urban life.

The film features experts who discuss the challenges and opportunities for the future of NYC’s aerial infrastructure, drawing on the New York think tank’s focus on urban design and digital interfaces.

The next public AERIAL FUTURES event will take place on Thursday, July 19 at the Denver Art Museum. This edition, entitled Constructed Landscapes, will ask how airports influence the future of mobility and transportation.

Advisory Panel issues report on improving JFK

2017-01-04T18:21:00-05:00

“Despite its importance to the region, JFK is not the airport passengers expect when arriving in one of the greatest cities in the world,” states the Airport Advisory Panel in their new report to the Governor. That’s a bit of an understatement. As many a traveller knows, JFK isn’t in the best shape. Hence the need for the report, which notes the costs of failing to act. By the mid-2020s, three million more passengers will head into JFK than its facilities can handle. In monetary terms, that amounts to about $140 million in annual wages, $400 million in annual sales, and 2,500 jobs—per each million not accommodated.

So the Panel put together a set of recommendations including:

Modernizing the airport’s terminals, starting with the oldest, and planning all future redevelopment around connections between terminals. The Panel recommends working together with private operators to fund the renovations.
Improving the airport’s roadways and expanding parking.
Expanding taxiways to improve air...

Bollería Industrial / Factory-Baked Goods expose and disrupt the banal rituals of airport travel

2016-09-09T13:08:00-04:00

Airports can be hell, as any traveler knows. From endless check-in lines to depersonalized security checkpoints to the dull monotony of waiting rooms and transit halls, the experience of traveling has become something of a 21st century ritual. You’ll (probably) get to your destination, but first you have to go through the (securitized and regulated) motions.

“By means of boredom, oddly familiar scenarios, and the climate-controlled atmospheres of in-transit buffers, the spaces and technologies of the airport relax our sensory spatial apprehension to camouflage the control parameters to which passengers are submitted,” write the Madrid-based design studio Bollería Industrial / Factory-Baked Goods in the text accompanying their installation Managing Distance, one of five commissioned “intervention strategies” of the In Residence component of the 2016 Oslo Architecture Triennale.

Comprising five different physical devices placed around the sleek Oslo Airport in Gardermoen, their interven...

Examining the International Airport “species” from “In The Unlikely Event”

2016-08-16T20:31:00-04:00

“In The Unlikely Event” by artist Janet Abrams digs into the nature of the fantastical International Airport typology — “a significant species of monumental urbanism, perhaps the archetypal City State of our time”...Created in 2013...ITUE is an ambitious large-scale ceramic installation that showcases the Top 30 of the world's busiest international airports as terra cotta ceramic bas-reliefs, which Abrams molded individually by hand.

Arranged like ancient fossils at a natural history museum, In The Unlikely Event (ITUE) is part two of Abrams' ongoing "A Natural History of Technology" case study series. In ITUE, each airport stands as a physical architectural expression of its home country's ambitions to compete in the global economy.

In The Unlikely Event, view during its US debut at form + concept gallery, Santa Fe, May 27 2016. Photo courtesy of Janet Abrams.

The exhibition is currently at Santa Fe's form + concept gallery until August 22. Read more about the project on Bustler.

A traveler's thoughts on fine-tuning airport design, for the sake of passengers

2016-04-06T14:49:00-04:00

Why are airports built for everyone — the city, the airlines, the retailers — except for the very people who use them the most: the passengers? When discussing his work, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was fond of saying, ‘God is in the details.’ Thanks to star architects, we now have towering, impressive halls of light and space. These new airports are the cathedrals of the 21st century: centers of communication, travel, family and commerce. But where are ‘God’s details’ in these new cathedrals?

“Architects have to try to create art and, at the same time, make room for sightlines, security checkpoints and control rooms,” writer Chris Holbrook says in his piece. “It’s an almost impossible juggling act, I realize, and it’s a small wonder that any airport gets built that isn’t just a cinder-block hovel with benches and rendition-style interrogation rooms.”

Architects compete for new Istanbul airport tower

2015-12-11T11:50:00-05:00

We particularly asked contestants to get inspired from icons of Turkey. Currently we are evaluating the submitted projects and will be announcing the results as soon as possible. - The Client

ZHA’s design was based on whirling dervishes, RMJMs on seagulls and Safdie Architects’ on Ottoman geometric patterns.Massimiliano Fuksas based its design on minarets while Grimshaw-Nordic drew inspiration from its nearby terminal buildings and Pininfarina-Aecom was influenced by tulips.

So, everyone knows how to listen and please the client and serve meaning.