Not motoring
Plane talk
Gavin Stamp
A'rports are not places to linger as the experience of air travel on the ground is usually anxious, confusing — and ugly. As buildings (`architecture' does not quite seem the word), British airports seem to resemble nothing so much as indoor shop- ping centres, disagreeably crowded with people and thoroughly disorientating in their layout. Only at the very end of the horrible experience of checking in does the traveller become aware that he or she is there to ascend to the heavens if the designer of these claustrophobic boxes gra- ciously allows a window to permit a view of runway and aeroplanes. But airports need not be like this. I recently had to spend some hours in the Kansai International Airport Terminal out- side Osaka and the experience, to my sur- prise and delight, was simply thrilling. I was on my way to Australia and was between two long, long exhausting (but very good) Japanese Airlines flights. The airport, I assumed, would present the usual uninspir- ing internationalised modern environment: but no. It was monumental, awe-inspiring and, above all, beautiful. I should have known, but I had forgotten, for Kansai Air- port was in all the architectural journals a few years back. It is famous, and rightly so.
The airport is built on an artificial island in the sea, connected with the mainland only by a bridge carrying road and, of course, fully integrated rail links. The ter- minal building itself was the subject of an international competition held in 1989 and was won by the Italian architect Renzo Piano. It opened in 1994. The concept, at first, seems simple as the terminal is one long straight building — over a mile in length. On one side the aircraft draw up; on the other, at a high level, automatic driverless trains take passengers to and from the central arrival and departure hall to the various gates along its immense length. Incoming and outgoing passengers are threaded through each other by a suc- cession of glazed lobbies with escalators placed at regular intervals along the seem- ingly interminable wings. As far as I could see, it all works efficiently, and elegantly.
In the centre of this vast structure is the four-storey hall for both international and domestic arrivals and departures. Commu- nication between levels is easily achieved by clearly visible escalators and glass lift towers, while the structure itself is close to and axial with the railway station and, beyond, the glitzy 'Aeroplaza' with its hotel and restaurants (certainly not designed by Piano). At the top is international depar- tures, beneath a huge metal roof which is the joy of the whole airport. For this roof is not a rectilinear, flat structure — yet another 'High Tec' shed of the sort that proliferates internationally — but a mag- nificent wave-like composition of curves and reverse curves. It begins low to form an entrance canopy over the approach road, then gently sweeps up before coming down again towards the runway side.
On one level, Kansai International Air- port Terminal is a large manifestation of `High Tec' architecture, but it has little in common with those self-conscious pseudo- industrial structures ostensibly justified by a functional response to the brief which would have been fashionable in Britain for over two decades. Yes, it is of steel, con- crete and glass, and it certainly owes noth- ing to the styles of the past, but there is nothing crude and utilitarian about it. Piano's design goes way beyond a purely engineering solution to the problem, for it celebrates the essence of the structure and the plan in an imaginative and indulgently aesthetic manner. This sort of design has been called lechnorganic' which is a good word, as the metal structure is sculptural, Curvaceous and organic, in the sense of being responsive to movement, strains and stresses.
In fact, the Kansai Terminal is the first High Tec building I have seen which is truly beautiful, in which engineering becomes architecture again: sensuous and controlled. Grimshaw's Chunnel railshed at Waterloo has something of this quality, except that it seems an over-elaborate and contrived response to the brief. Although a 'mega structure', Piano's airport is lucid, logical and always thoughtful. The essential idea is a standard cross-section extruded laterally, but even that is elevated above the obvious by gently curving down the mile-long Curved roof-and-wall of the departure lounge towards its distant extremities. Piano clearly loves curves, so the whole thing is !Mused with the symbolism of flight, the Imagery of wings, birds and aeroplanes. Renzo Piano is known in Britain as the sometime partner of Richard Rogers in ostensibly designing the Pompidou Centre In Paris, a crude and flawed High Tec ges- ture if ever was. But Piano has moved on, to heights not yet attained by our own superstars — Foster and Rogers — to Whom even staid establishment figures for some reason grant such uncritical rever- ence. For it is interesting to compare Kan- sa]. with Foster's much acclaimed new terminal at Stansted Airport. Stansted, although much smaller, fails to solve the Problems surmounted at the vast Kansai. Yes, the central tall glazed terminal is an elegant structure, but passengers still have to walk through long tubes to the planes while the idea of a big space enclosed by big windows is vitiated by the introduction of necessary partitions and by wretched shops. At the Japanese terminal, there certainly are the usual overpriced international trash emporia, but they are firmly subservient to the structure, while the transparency of the Conception is never compromised — views through the glass never let you forget that this is a busy airport. As I waited for my flight to Sydney, I sat in the main departure lounge as sunlight flooded into the tasteful- ly grey, grey interior and, as if in a dream, gazed at planes taking off against the misty backdrop of the distant hills of Japan beyond. Later, as night fell, I stood by the curved glass wall near the departure gate and watched enthralled as a huge Boeing Was guided to its stand by a man with illu- minated red batons who, with formal, bal- letic gestures, brought the nosewheel of the huge machine to stop precisely on a yellow line. And then, standing on his elevated platform, he put his flaming batons togeth- er and bowed to the pilot high above: an enchanting gesture. If we really must travel by air, this is the way to do it.
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