The Secret to Good Airport Design: Aesthetic vs Efficiency

Most people don't wanna spend more time in an airport

than they have to.

That makes efficiency the number one job for airport design.

But for the time you do spend there,

you want it to be pleasant, comfortable,

and maybe even beautiful.

Hi, I am Michael Wyetzner,

I've been an architect for over 35 years.

And today, we're gonna be talking about the secret

to good airport design.

And why it's so important

to balance the expediency and experience of your time

in the airport.

First of all, airports, originally,

were designed primarily just for function.

They started as military and government facilities,

which were just hangers and sheds

and dirt landing strips in a field.

As flight became more accessible

and more people traveled by plane,

airports needed to be much larger to accommodate the demands

for all these new passenger flights.

They now needed to include spaces for check-in,

baggage claim, gates for waiting at,

and food service and other retail.

I mean, the idea of a large airport

was a totally new typology.

They could have made them look like train stations,

but they didn't.

They were searching for a new language for their design.

They maintained some of that utilitarian feel

because efficiency and cost were still factors.

But at this point,

most of them just ended up looking like office buildings.

At that point,

efficiency became even more important than before.

Airports needed to accommodate

and still do three modes of traffic,

people, bags, and flights.

And the way they did this

was to separate the passenger traffic vertically

based on whether you were arriving or departing.

So, typically, airports are designed on two levels.

One level is for bags, one level is for people.

Airplanes are very tall.

So, typically, when you enter the airport

for your departing flight,

you are entering on the upper level

because that's where you enter the plane at.

And when you arrive at your destination, typically,

you are on the ground level

because that is the level in the airplane

that the bags are located in.

And so those bags come in directly and you grab your bag

and go out to the street level to get your taxi,

your Uber or your Lyft.

As airports continued to grow, they became more complex,

not only in their configurations,

but in the variety of spaces that they offered.

Airport security began to take up a much larger footprint.

And over the years, food service and retail

became a massive part of the floor plan.

Travel efficiency and retail economics were the main factors

in airport design for many years.

But the aesthetic aspect of their design

didn't progress beyond imitations of office buildings

until one specific terminal significantly changed

the dynamics of airport design, driven more by aesthetic.

And the experience of visiting the airport itself

rather than treating it just as a transitional space

between a car and an airplane.

And the turning point in this aesthetic evolution

can be traced back to a single terminal

that was completed in 1962

at what was then called Idlewild Airport

and is now called John F. Kennedy International.

This is the TWA Flight Center designed by Eero Saarinen.

So, Saarinen had just completed

the General Motors headquarters in Michigan,

which had gotten a lot of acclaim and a lot of attention.

He designed a lot of very unique buildings,

all different from one another

including the hockey rink at Yale University.

So, Saarinen was chosen for this project

because he was known as a visionary.

No two buildings he did were ever the same.

And he was actually designing another very famous airport

called Dulles Airport outside of Washington

at the very same time.

And for this project, he wanted to design a building

that evoked the excitement of air travel.

So what Saarinen did to evoke this idea of flight

was he created these swooping grand curves

and lifted them up almost like wings would lift up

above this portion of the building.

And he almost created

what appears to be like the beak of a giant bird,

and to some that was a little too picturesque.

And he was actually criticized for it.

But there's no denying that this building itself,

the interior as well as the exterior,

evokes the idea of taking off and flying through the air.

And what's most remarkable about this

is this was done in an era before computers.

So all this was designed as it were by hand.

The building has these multiple compound and complex curves.

And in fact, he couldn't even draw it.

They basically just kept building

model after model after model, and then they drew that.

So let's take a look at the interior of the building,

which is in many ways

is even more exciting than the exterior.

I mean, it's incredible actually.

He creates these extremely dynamic, swirling forms

on the interior.

And then the roof of this building,

which comes down and forms the walls

and the entire enclosure for the interior

is actually made of four separate folded shells.

And he separated each of these shells

with this linear skylight.

And for me, this sort of represents the pinnacle

of the glamour of air travel in the early 1960s.

The era of President John F. Kennedy,

the space race, the innocence before Vietnam

still basking in the victory of World War II.

And I think this building by Saarinen

contributed more to that feeling

than any other building of the era.

In that, it's the expression of flight

and the sense of discovery that comes with air travel.

So the way Saarinen designed this airport

was there's this great terminal,

but then you've gotta go through these long tubes

to get to these gates

where the planes are to board your flight.

You could see the tubes clearly here

and through this window here.

So when you get off your flight

after coming out of this tube of an airplane,

he brings you into this other tube,

this really evocative,

almost like the esophagus of a giant animal

that you walk through.

And then you emerge from this tight dark space

into this bright and luminous airport terminal.

Saarinen created this place

that you weren't meant just to walk through,

but you were actually meant to linger and enjoy

and get a sense of the excitement of air travel.

Typically, when you arrive at an airport,

the last thing you wanna do is linger.

I mean, it's been hours since you got in the car

or the train that brought you to the airport

until you waited, until you got on your flight,

until your flight finally landed.

So the first thing you wanna do

is get to the baggage carousel as quickly as possible,

collect your belongings, and be on your way.

You don't linger to look at the architecture,

but occasionally one is struck by something amazing,

and that's what happens at TWA.

You come out of your plane into this long tube,

which brings you into this amazing space below,

and it gives you a sense of what a great airport can be.

Suddenly, you realize you're in a new and exciting place,

and that's what a great airport can give.

Some other airports that have also created this feeling

are Barajas in Spain by Richard Rogers,

Kansai in Japan by Renzo Piano,

the Jeddah Airport in Saudi Arabia by SOM,

and Dulles Airport, of course,

outside of Washington DC, also by Saarinen.

The thing about air travel today

is it's extremely safe and extremely affordable.

So because of all this,

people are spending more and more time at the airport.

And so one would like them to be as beautiful as possible.

So now let's take a look at an airport

that takes that idea even further,

Daxing International Airport in Beijing, China.

So this is the largest airport building in the world

designed by Zaha Hadid Architects.

Here's everything jumps out at me.

First off, it's the massive scale of this building.

The building footprint is so large

that the runways almost look diminutive in comparison.

And it obviously takes a lot of cues

from what Saarinen did at TWA

in terms of its plastic curves and organic shapes.

It almost looks like some sort of living marine creature.

In fact, it's nicknamed The Starfish.

The other way in that it relates to TWA

is that it also has these linear skylights,

these separation of the shells.

So in a way, it's this series of boomerang shapes,

these parabola that all sort of meet

to form this radial construction.

And in the center, there is this lattice work

of this amazing skylight, which we'll show you from within.

And speaking of skylights,

each one of these little domes are actually skylights.

And in fact, if you look at it from the roadway,

it looks very reminiscent of the TWA terminal at JFK.

And you could see with this large overhang

and the way the form lifts up

and it's filled in with glass below

is very reminiscent of what Saarinen did at TWA.

But it's not just beautiful on the outside.

This building is really quite incredible from the interior.

So these two photos give you a great view of the interior

and the skylights that flooded with natural light.

And I mentioned the vortex at the center of this form,

that lattice skylight, well, this is it from the interior.

And you could see the linear skylights that separate

each one of those parabolic boomerang like shapes

from one another.

And this is one of those small,

almost elliptical shaped skylights

that you saw from the roof.

And it just gives you an idea of the massive scale

of this building that that tiny little oval

that we saw on the roof

is actually compared to a person is an enormous size.

And you could see the excitement on the interior.

I mean, this actually, you know you're at an airport,

here's the check-in counters, here's baggage,

and then here you see all these amazing shapes,

and I love that she did this suspended arch,

which looks like it's just floating in midair,

and then she suspends the bridge from it.

It's this dynamic, amazing environment

that totally envelops you, where it's hard to distinguish

between floor, wall, and ceiling.

One thing grows out of the other.

So clearly, the experience of being here was forefront

in the designer's minds.

The idea was let's create an amazing place to be.

Okay, so let's talk about Zaha Hadid.

Truly one of the great architects

of the late 20th and early 21st century.

She was hugely influenced by a group of artists

known as the supremacists

who were Kazimir Malevich, EL Lissitzky, and Liubov Popova.

They were called that because they were interested

in the supremacy of pure artistic feeling

as opposed to just the visual depiction of objects.

And Zaha was also a painter.

Through her paintings, she explores spaces

that architecture hasn't considered before.

So these paintings foreshadow her early built work,

such as the Vitra Fire Station in Switzerland,

and the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati,

which are all very hard-edged and rectilinear

and don't employ those soft curves yet.

At the MAXXI Museum in Rome, she starts to soften her form

and creates these more curvilinear shapes,

which over the years leads to the astonishing forms

that she employs at Daxing.

Sadly, she died in 2016 before its completion,

but her stamp is all over it.

And truly, she's one of the great architects

of the 21st century.

But Daxing is not just beautiful,

it's also extremely efficient.

So this aerial view really shows the efficiency

of this radial hub and spoke concept

of which this airport is designed.

So, basically, what this hub and spoke concept means

is that no gate is too far away from the center.

In fact, it's only an eight minute walk to the farthest end

of each one of these piers.

So this concept is incredibly pedestrian friendly

because it means you don't have to walk

all these great distances like you do at other airports.

For instance, at Dallas Fort Worth,

it's over two miles to the furthest gate,

which is 40 minutes of walking time.

So this radial concept also means

you don't need other forms of transportation

to get around the airport.

You don't require buses, shuttles, or trains.

Of course, this shape, which is so efficient for passengers,

is actually a somewhat common arrangement for terminals.

So, Daxing, although it's radial,

is actually based on the pier concept.

And the pier concept when arranging an airport terminal

is basically just a linear pier like you would find

at a marina with boats.

But in this case, it contains planes,

and the planes just all sit here like this.

So at one end is the terminal

and a string of gates come off it along this pier concept,

and then the jetway goes to each one.

So what happens at Daxing, they take this pier concept

and they just do five of them coming off the same terminal,

which again, makes this extremely efficient for people

inside the airport to get to where they're going.

Of course, there are other common configurations,

and probably the earliest configuration

was just the linear concept

where you have an airport and here's your terminal,

and then your gates are here, and then you have a plane here

and a plane here and a plane here,

and they're all just arranged in one linear row.

Then, of course, there's another configuration,

which is known as the satellite configuration.

And the satellite configuration

is essentially a total separation from the terminal.

So you have your terminal here,

and then you have your gates out here.

So the advantage of the satellite configuration

is that the tarmac is uninterrupted

and the planes are closer to the taxiways and the runways.

The other advantage of it is it's more efficient

and you can get more planes

along the perimeter of the building.

So while it's more efficient for the airplanes,

it's less efficient for the passengers.

And actually the next airport we're gonna look at

combines two of these ideas

to really maximize the efficiency for the planes.

This is Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport

in Atlanta, Georgia.

And it's actually the busiest airport in the world.

In fact, it's the only airport that has ever served

over 100 million passengers in one year.

One of the reasons why this is the busiest airport

in the world is that 80% of the US population

lives within a two hour flight of this airport.

And if designing an airport is a series of decisions

between aesthetics and efficiency,

every decision they made here at Hartsfield

is the complete opposite of what they did at Daxing.

At ATL, efficiency for flights beats everything else.

So this is what makes it so efficient for flights.

They combine two of the configurations

that we just looked at.

You get planes on either side of this linear form.

And they use them as satellites

so that they can get as many as they can,

and the tarmac is uninterrupted.

What that means is that any of these planes

can reach any of the five runways

in a very short amount of time.

But the trade off here is that unlike Daxing,

which has a short walk to any gate,

here the connections between terminals are underground

and require passengers to take elevators or escalators down,

board a train, and then take an escalator-elevator back up

to the level of their flight.

It's a clever solution separating the traffic vertically

to allow maximum flexibility for flights,

but it also adds multiple modes of travel

within the airport itself.

You take three or four different types of transportation

just to get you to your fifth airplane. [chuckles]

So the sacrifice here

is that you're hopefully spending less time

in the airport overall, thanks to its efficiency,

which should mean fewer delays

and shorter waits for flights.

But the time you do spend here is not visually inspiring

in the same way that it is at TWA or Daxing.

So while it is maximizing efficiency for flights,

there is a trade-off with the experience

of actually being in the airport.

So let's take a closer look at the terminals.

So this design really hearkens back

to the original ideas of airports

when they were just these very efficient, utilitarian spaces

made to get people on and off their airplanes.

And you could actually see the planes, the jet waves,

and the actual terminal building right here.

And that terminal building is here in this photograph.

And you can see there's really not much to it.

It's just basically an aluminum box

with corrugated metal along the outside,

the occasional window, and that's it.

There's very little natural light.

It couldn't be more mundane if it tried.

And the interiors are exactly the same way.

So what I love about this

is the terminal looks like the warehouse buildings

that you see surrounding airports.

In that, they're built for completely utilitarian

and efficient reasons and nothing else.

This airport is built entirely for function,

and that function is getting airplanes in

and getting airplanes out.

Unfortunately, one pays an aesthetic price

for that efficiency.

So what is the secret to good airport design?

I think it's about striking a balance

between efficiency and an aesthetic experience.

The reality is the nature of air travel now

means that you're gonna spend more time in the airport

than you really want to.

So you might as well be in as nice a building

as you can be in.

But no matter how nice that building is,

you still want the airport to run efficiently

and you don't wanna spend more time there than you have to.

So there has to be a sweet spot between the two,

and that is the nature of good airport design today.

So what's your favorite airport

and your least favorite airport?

Let us know in the comments below.