AIRPORT

Bucharest, Bulgaria

As is the case for most airports, the site for this project is flat and devoid of any topographical variation. Airports fall under the shed typology, where the roof is the most important part of the envelope. It is the portal to the city, the first impression that visitors and locals experience as they arrive from above.

The spatial concept for this airport is rhythms and thresholds. This is achieved through the reticulation of spatial and structural bays, which are conceptualized as cells. The cell is asymmetrical in the xy, yz, and the xz directions, providing differentiated results depending on the placement and direction of instantiation. There are eight parameters, such as beam dimensions, slab thicknesses, and column dimensions that are designed and adjusted to respond to different conditions and program. The cell has the ability to oscillate between two extreme conditions, struts and surface. It can be a thin structural framework, or it can be surfaces providing enclosure, shelter, and floors to walk on. One leg of the cell is angulated to respond to desired light in the space. The outward angulations allow more sunlight into spaces. The outdoor garden takes advantage of this formal opportunity. The inward angulations block light, appropriate for resting lounges. One side of the cell is open-ended and the other is a ‘portal’, conceived as a threshold that can change in aperture dimensions.

The design of the armature is informed by the size of the airport bays. Wider bays accommodate international travel. Narrow bays serve regional and domestic travel. Longitudinally, cells instantiate side to side providing rhythmic directional flow. On the short axis the cells instantiate front to front providing larger spaces; back to back or back to front providing smaller spaces. The reticulation is both, bottom-up and top-down aggregations. Both parts and whole (cell and armature) are responsible for scalar variations of form and space.