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Caterpillar In
Siam
Landing
at Suvranabhumi Airport is an experience straight
out of a science-fiction film. Having passed through
this airport several times, after it’s opening in
late 2006 – it urged me to try and understand - how
this little Caterpillar crawled into Bangkok – an
analogy for a first impression!
As Rome was not built in a day – so did it take 11
long years of intense planning and construction to
see this new icon now identifiable with Bangkok city
and Thailand. The new airport is located in a
3,100ha site in the Samut Prakarn province, 30km
east of Bangkok. Construction of Suvarnabhumi
Airport began in January 2002. The name Suvarnabhumi
(pronounced su-wan-na-poom) was chosen by His
Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej and means ‘the
golden land’, specifically referring to continental
Indochina.
Concept
An international design competition resulted in a
collaboration between Helmut Jahn, Werner Sobek and
Matthias Schulerout to try and seek a new gateway
for Thailand as an important objective. As a
starting point in many ways, Architect Helmut Jahn’s
philosophy that “Creativity has to do more with the
elimination of the inessential, than inventing
something new” is perhaps the underlying concept
with which the crawl of a decade for this
caterpillar began.
The design took into consideration Murphy/Jahn’s
experiences with airport terminal designs, starting
from the 1950’s that included O’Hare International
Airport in Chicago, the New United Airlines Terminal
of the mid 1980’s, work in the commercial zone,
infrastructure, parking and landscaped areas of the
New Munich Airport and the new Terminal 2 and the
Train-Station at the airports in Cologne and Bonn.
With the objective in place and the experience at
hand, Helmut Jahn sheds light on their concept by
mentioning… “airports today are becoming a strange
combination of Transportation Center and Mall. They
constitute cities outside cities and give the first
and last impression of a city, region or country”.
He goes on to explain another profound
understanding, “the gesture of the roof as a
memorable image and the way of blurring of the
boundaries between public and private space makes an
airport terminal a model of a ‘Mini-City’.” Like in
a city, the experience leads through squares,
streets and rooms for transportation, commerce and
private uses.
This view does get reflected while getting out of
the plane and experiencing this Airport City which
is certainly no ‘mini’ on a relative scale and in
fact is indicative of the ever expanding growth of
airports today to fulfill increasing requirements.
Long walkways comparable to streets with escalators
hurrying you towards exits, punctuated with twists
and turns like squares and intersections of interest
are experiences that get compounded along the
passage. However, the monotonous crawl of the
caterpillar does contrast with the expectation of a
vibrant Thailand. Lack of colours overshadowed with
an emphasis on the functional does limit the
potential of the aesthetics in these streets,
squares and volumes of space.
Archi-Neering
Also to be observed on scanning through the works of
Murphy/Jahn since the early 90’s is their interest
for the integration of technology and design. This
goal while designing buildings in an integrated
approach breaks down the barriers that often exist
between architecture and engineering - the birth of
an integrated concept called Archi-Neering. A new
word for the dictionary for a marriage between
architecture and engineering, coined on a vision
perhaps of the marriage that we get to see more
often in contemporary buildings around the world
today.
In the design and execution of Suvarnabhumi Airport,
innovative and integrated architectural, structural
and environmental designs can be observed o reflect
new materials and systems of advanced technology
that have been developed for construction processes
required to meet new design goals. The goal, as it
appears, is to strive for transparency and elevate
systems and materials in their construction to a
level of art. The results are advanced long spans,
lightweight steel structures, exposed pre-cast
concrete structures, clear or low e-coated glass, a
three layer translucent membrane, integrated cooling
using water as a low energy carrier, and the thermal
mass of concrete as well as a displacement
ventilation system with minimal air-changes.
Whereas the above efficiencies are highlights and
dominant characters, the observer, on closer
analysis, does seek more of a reflection on the
human scale, of experience and colour. These
components maximize daylight and comfort, yet
minimize the use of energy with significant life
cycle cost savings. The installed cooling power as
pointed out is reduced close to 50% compared to a
conventional system. The three layer translucent
membrane was developed to mediate between the
exterior and interior conditions, dealing with heat
and noise transmission, while still allowing for
natural daylight within the building. The facade
acts as a fabric which moderates the natural and
artificial light, becoming a screen. Thus, it does
show an effort to use materials and techniques which
push the limits of available technology.
Experience
The arrivals and departures into a country through
the gateway of an airport is an experience
equivalent to landing at the doorstep. Thus, the
door that opens into this particular airport clearly
reflects the new age and thinking on an efficiency
scale that is unparalleled in history and one that
has made excellent use of the advancement in
engineering and materials.
Simultaneously, the simplification of aesthetics
into the overlapping of the structural elements and
energy does make one look forward to other
ingredients that make up the lighter side of human
experience such as a play with materials, colours
and spaces that represent the Thai spirit. The
quality of lighting, no doubt, does try to give it a
spiritual upliftment and a twist that turns this
caterpillar into a butterfly.
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