Ask architects what is the most important aspect of contemporary airport design and most will tell you some version of a sense of place. That’s right, it’s all about the local at these gateways to the world.
“Bringing the sense of place of every single city to airports is critical,” Safdie Architects Partner Jaron Lubin who worked on the Jewel at Singapore Changi Airport told me a few years ago.
Achieving a sense of place in modern airport design is a whole other matter. Most new airports are steel-and-glass behemoths that, yes, have local touches but one could be excused if they mixed up, say, Detroit and Salt Lake City. Distinct modern airports include (and this is far from an exhaustive list) Albuquerque with its pueblo-style aesthetic, Denver with its iconic peaked roof, Washington Reagan National with its yellow trusses and Jeffersonian domes, and Santa Barbara.
Yes, Santa Barbara.
“We’re one of a few airports [in the U.S.] that are reflective of the indigenous, local architecture,” Fred Sweeney, one of the lead architects of Santa Barbara Airport terminal and a former design principal at PMSM Architects (now 19Six Architects), told me.
The terminal, opened in 2011, embraces the Spanish Colonial Revival architectural style that defines the Southern California city. That distinct look dates to decisions made after a 1925 earthquake to rebuild Santa Barbara’s hard-hit downtown in a “unified Spanish Colonial Revival style,” as Visit Santa Barbara puts it.
Fast forward 80 years and the Santa Barbara City Council codified that it wanted a new airport terminal to keep with the city’s architectural heritage. In a 2005 resolution, the council said:
“The new terminal building should marry historic architecture with modern technology and need not be a literal example of Spanish Colonial Revival Architecture but instead ‘be courageous’ and ‘push the envelope’ of Hispanic design, incorporating both traditional and modern design elements.”
The resulting terminal was the result of years of work, and intense review by multiple local boards, by a team of HNTB and PMSM. Sweeney even traveled to Spain to get a sense of Santa Barbara’s architectural heritage for the design.
“Two of my colleagues who were on the architectural review board. They said ‘why don’t you go look at Union Station in Los Angeles?’ That’s where the arch came from,” Sweeney said. The resulting terminal entryway arch even incorporates an aviation flourish: it looks like a jet plane in flight when you look at it in profile.
“This is the first airport I've worked on that is trying to look old,” said Joe Grogan, the project manager at HNTB who oversaw the project, at the terminal opening in 2011.
All of the work that went into the Santa Barbara Airport terminal was for the better. Few airports convey to travelers where they are — that sense of place so many seek — by their architecture alone. Santa Barbara does, and does it well.
On a recent trip through the Santa Barbara Airport, that local design was on display. Deplaning on a glass jetway — yes, the rare glass jetbridge in the U.S. — the terminal’s white stucco walls immediately spoke to the region’s architectural heritage. That white continued inside to the concourse where it was broken up by wood-colored elements. And the ground-level outdoor patio extending onto the ramp (but located in the pre-security area of the airport) — also my son’s favorite spot — realizes the City Council’s design guideline that the terminal include “light, fresh air and access to the outdoors.”
Today, the airport is working on an expansion plan in response to surging passenger traffic (thanks Southwest Airlines). Passenger numbers soared to 1.3 million last year, a 28% jump from pre-pandemic levels, airport data shows. Plans call for a southerly concourse extension with two more gates and new holdrooms. Sweeney is working on that extension with a mandate to not “let the addition overrun the iconic front,” he said.
What I’m Writing
Been to New York’s LaGuardia Airport recently? I spent a day exploring Terminals B and C to see how it has become cool. (The Washington Post)
The other week when there were dueling hearings on Boeing on Capitol Hill, I attended the monthly Aero Club of Washington D.C. to listen to NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy. There she refuted some of the claims made by whistleblowers just a few miles away. (FlightGlobal)
“The bottom line here is we changed the trajectory,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told me of the prospect for American passenger rail in an interview Monday. He spoke from Las Vegas where he had just attended the ground breaking of the new Brightline West high-speed rail line connecting Southern California and Las Vegas. If all goes well, trains will be whisking travelers between the two cities by 2028. (The Washington Post)
What I’m Reading
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo beloved in the urbanist community for her transformation of Paris. Bike lanes and pedestrian spaces have taken space formerly reserved for automobiles. But at home? She’s not quite so loved.
What I’m Listening To
In 2007, Astronaut Sunita Williams ran the Boston Marathon — in space! Where my interests in running and aviation collide on the Sidedoor podcast.
The Pratt & Whitney geared turbofan situation “is definitely one of the biggest issues impacting the industry at this moment but it’s not probably getting the attention it deserves because it’s a known quantity.” Good discussion of the industrial issues plaguing aviation on a recent episode of FlightRadar24’s AvTalk (and something I touched on recently in The Air Current).