Kansai International Airport

1. Time : 1990 - 1994
2. Location : Osaka, Japan

If you want you can walk along the length of the waiting room at Kansai International Airport in Osaka, but remember this distance is 1800m, because this is the longest building, located off an island. artificial. However, this fact is a reasonable response before the need for a new airport.

Kansai region is the second largest region in Japan, with a population of about 20 million. The existing airport is surrounded by urbanized areas, cannot be further expanded, but there are no other options, when construction has developed to the surrounding mountains. Research shows that the optimal solution is to build an island in Osaka Bay, away from the city center. The runway can be arranged so that taking and landing takes place on the sea surface, reducing noise and allowing 24/24 operation. Easy to expand by expanding the island area. These factors can be made with significant costs for such a project.

Kansai International Airport photographed from high down (Photo: Wikipedia)

Island

The artificial island has an area of ​​approximately 4.5 x 2.5 km. The sea area at this location is about 20m deep, but the seabed at this depth consists of a very dense clay layer, which is estimated to be filled with 11m sediment to form the island. It took five years to move the huge amount of stone blocks required, by flattening the two nearby mountains. Materials transferred by barges to the construction site, located by computers combined with artificial satellites before pouring into the sea. In fact, the material needed is much more than expected, leading to more covering so the project is a year slower.

Terminal works

Kansai Airport is basically just a single building, 1.8 km long;the aircraft parked along the wall piles extending from the main hall to the sides.Passengers always orient themselves easily.

The work is the subject of an international design competition in 1988, based on a brief proposal of Aéroports de Paris. Renzo Piano Buildinh Workshop, with Ove Arup & Partners as an engineer, won the prize. Their proposal is summarized as follows: Basically shaped like a new airport, handling domestic and international flights in a single building, airplanes park along the long walls. Such a narrow, long structure is very effective in the sense of an island diagram, essentially defined as an airstrip.

Kansai Airport structure diagram on computer.The shape has the function of transferring air from the passenger part (left) to the runway (right).

While most ground subsidence occurred before the construction began, some of the remaining settlement was inevitable. If they are not uniform, the texture will be deformed and damaged. In response to such distortions, the entire building is located on the trigger points, if each point is required to operate independently to capture the structural frame.

Clarity and movement

From the beginning, clear orientation is an extremely important design object. At all times, it is easy for customers to come (unlike other airports) which is somewhat land and somewhat heavenly. To do so, there must be two major decisions - all concessions (cafes and duty-free shops) are arranged on a mezzanine elevation, and a narrow room (" canyon ") is built in the section land.

The purpose of the "canyon" is to make it convenient for passengers to go to the appropriate floors in the building with elevators and escalators leaning against the outer wall. The original " canyon " colors (blue and loess) are a surprise, but can be found in Japanese traditional architecture.

The ground is illuminated from above, planting trees to increase the concept of " street ". Passengers cross the " canyon " at the elevated elevation, see the waiting room and the roof - a curved structure that is almost entirely framed, is also a unique feature of the airport.

" Gorge" - is a Roman hall, full of light, high, convergence of all the routes leading to the gates of the plane. The roof is longer than 80m. (Photo: answers.com)

International flight lounge

The roof of the flight waiting room is constructed from a series of steel-girder-type beams with clearly defined lines, informing the passengers of the direction to continue or down through the building, first declaring customs, then arriving waiting room at the lower elevation. However, the clarity is not equal to the cost of structural logic: because the roof must match the massive structural blocks below, the air volume is controlled only to a minimum.

The raised leg section creates a support pillow on the side, which reminds visitors of important design parameters in Japan - earthquake protection. Depending on the level of risk, construction on seismic areas requires the design of a piece in weight as to bear horizontal load. In Japan, a high-risk area, construction laws require that Kansai structures do not fall due to lateral load due to the large structural weight of the structure itself. But the engineers suggested, the structure could be built on the wall but still completely stable. They could not know how soon after their design was tested: in January 1994, before handing over the project, an earthquake of magnitude 7.2 on the Richter scale occurred near Kobe, with earthquake center only 30km away from the airport. Although some points in the perimeter of the island were subsided, it was the terminal house of its structure and covering that was completely unmodified.

The outline on the roof of the flight waiting room shows the passenger traffic at the airport. (Photos: Wikipedia)

The ceiling of the room is also notable because the tranquility often accompanies air-conditioned premises and artificial lighting. The solution designed for both of these problems lies in the structural clamshell between the scaffolds and the direction of the airflow emitted from the nozzle in the sculpture, acting as counter-components for lighting fixtures mounted below. This is an outstanding technical solution to operational standards, but Kansai's outstanding feature lies in how to integrate this solution in design as a whole.

Waiting room

The waiting room does not restrict travel along the entire length of 1800m, which can be considered the longest room in the world. While this room is effective in the sense of customer travel, it is unexpected, meeting the convention in fire protection policies in massive projects in Japan (as well as other countries) is reduced. number of partitions at regular intervals. The removal of such partitions is only possible by the combination of technology and coordination of Japanese institutions. The proposed strategy is described as the concept of " hut and island ". The risk of fire (such as a concession) is grouped in the control of many quick-release nozzles and hoods (" huts "). Places at lower risk (such as a group of seats) are placed away from each other in an " island " style to prevent fire from spreading from one row to another.

The waiting room looks very beautiful spread out along the length of the building. (Photos: Wikipedia)

Construction achievements

The profile of the construction of the airport has a lot of things. Although Osaka Bay has many other artificial islands, Kansai is farther away (5km / 3 miles) and in deeper waters than other islands. After dumping 178 million cubic meters (6286 cubic feet) of materials, the miles-long terminal building with a total floor area of ​​300,000 cubic meters (3,230,000 square feet) was completed in just three years. For this, many separate contracts signed with two corporations, headed by Takinaka and Obayashi, each group constructs half of the works - delimiting exactly the center of the work for the two corporations.

But construction achievements are not the only factor admiring visitors. The humanity and accuracy of the design, along with the attention to detail, looks elegant and is clearly an airport with no rival.

Actual data:

1. Length: 1800m
2. Area: 300,000m ²
3. Manpower (maximum): 10,000
4. Island construction cost: $ 17 billion
5. Annual flights: 160,000
6. Runway: 3,500m