Just before the world shutdown for Covid-19, I had the opportunity to listen to HOK Design Principal, and airport architect, Peter Ruggiero speak on the future of airport design at the Chicago Architecture Center. Ruggiero’s focus was HOK’s design for the new Terminal B at New York’s LaGuardia Airport, which at that time was under construction.
It was a fascinating talk that covered everything from the headhouse (terminal) and finger design of airports in the 1950s and ‘60s, to the rise of the “airport under a big hat” concept pioneered by Eero Saarinen with his Dulles terminal in 1962, and contemporary airports that are all about “transparency, flexibility and fluidity.”
Below is an transcript (edited for clarity) of Ruggiero’s talk. Enjoy!
Good evening, and thank you everyone for coming in this evening.
So LaGuardia, the existing airport terminal is a classic, 1960s terminal. Four concourses, or four fingers, and the headhouse, which is the crescent shaped building. Inside the crescent shaped building is, basically, check in and arrivals. It was built in the era of the DC-9 [and] 707, so it didn't accommodate security, didn’t accommodate food and beverage, or a place to kill time. The security takes place where the fingers meet the concourses, and all the food is basically before security — all those things that you just don't want to encounter in an airport.
The new terminal occupies the penthouse.
The kind of big breakthrough in the design of this project was we didn't resort to to an idea of replicating fingers and a headhouse. We said ‘the greatest opportunity we have for designing this while the existing building remains in operation was to actually separate the two functions’ — separate the concourse and fingers from the headhouse. Two new L-shaped concourses are almost island like; the planes are completely, entirely around the perimeter and connected with a bridge. And then connecting to an all new headhouse, which is departures, check in, security, all the amenities and beverage functions, and then arrivals.
This is a quick little typological study that explains, at least in our mind, the evolution of airports. At the top is Eero Saarinen’s seminal work, the Dulles Airport. In 2011, the AIA [American Institute of Architects] voted for this to be the most significant American building of the 20th century. The interesting thing about Saarinen’s work is it’s all about the space under the big roof, all about the celebration of leaving Washington, D.C., about this journey to the sky … The baggage claim is an eight-foot space. You are in the basement. Arriving in Washington, D.C., was via the basement. My colleagues in the profession, they said this building is great — and it is. But it's flaw, in our mind, was the arrival sequence. And it was so great that it was copied so many times. The paradigm was copied, the idea of the airport under the big hat, the fifth facade as we all refer to it the profession — this great space defined by a signature roof.
We said when we began LaGuardia ‘what if arrivals and departures are in one big two story room, and departures is actually a mezzanine in that space.’ When the passenger arrives, beginning on the bridge, that whole circulation, that sequence is all a part of your welcome to New York City — that you are not in the basement. You are in a great space defined by two big vertical sectional moves.
As we design all of our projects, what’s important to us are three things: transparency, flexibility, and fluidity. Transparency is … not about transparent use of glass, it's about being able to see the next step in the process. In a contemporary airport terminal, you can always see one or two steps ahead of you. These great spaces allow that great sense of depth and transparency. The only place in LaGuardia that you encounter a wall is at security because that’s the nature of security, it has to be a wall. But once you're beyond security, then that whole process of being able to see the steps starts again.
Like a slinky it needs to be flexible, needs to have a sense of flexibility — once in motion, we continue to grow and to change. And then like a drop of rain water at the top of the mountain that finds its way downstream and eventually to the ocean, you are that drop of rain water in the terminal. There’s that sense of fluidity and sense of movement, and it's all very intuitive, easy to understand, and easy to navigate. And sure there are there are puddles, and there are eddies, and there are rapids along the way for that drop of water but that's pretty much the same experience you have architecturally in a great terminal.
And of course, these buildings have to be civic. They represent cities, they represent a place. And so how, like the great train stations of the 19th and early 20th century, do they embellish the local place embellish architecturally in these buildings?
[LaGuardia Terminal B] works pretty much like any other contemporary airport, departures level is check in and security. That sense of transparency, you go right from departures through this giant portal into security. But once you’re through security, this great window looks out on the airfield. You can see the two bridges, [and] you can see the airplanes. Already at this point, you know where you're going, you have a sense of those distances. The other thing is that, once you're through security, the only place to go — you obviously know that you have to go there, you have to go where the planes are — but the only way to go is up very, very visible escalators to the next floor.
As I close, just a reminder that we need these buildings to do these three things. They need to have that sense of arrival, that welcome mat to the city as opposed to just strictly being about departing. They need to be civic, they need to have a brand quality to them that honors that civic tradition of the train station. And they need to be, and this is the case with LaGuardia, this bold move of building bridges over existing buildings that enabled that project to be done in five years, as opposed to about eight or 10. And that bold move, which then allows airplanes to get off the gates quicker — those bridges capture that great inventive spirit of New York, of great cities.
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So cool! DC-resident Richard Paules puts his "Lego brain" to work recreating the Washington region’s distinctive landmarks. His latest work, a Lego replica of Eero Saarinen’s Dulles Airport terminal, now sits in the terminal.
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Sounds like a fun and interesting lecture.