32 PROJECT REPORT: TRANSPORT FACILITIES & PUBLIC REALM
As such, instead of placing the airport's functions on a horizontal plane as in many airports, at Beijing Daxing they are stacked on top of each other, with vertical connectivity where necessary. The uppermost Level 4 is the conventional departure level, including the check-in island and bag drop off. Level 3 is a higher throughput departure level from which frequent and domestic fliers can pass through security faster using smart, ‘self- processing’ gates with digital boarding pass technology. Level 2 is for domestic arrivals, Level 1 for international arrivals, and below that is a basement level for regional bus, taxi and rail transport entrances, and a further level below with the railway station and platforms.
Due to the stacked approach, “functions all come together as a layer cake, speed around the building is increased, and the walking distance becomes much less,” explains Ceccato.
Tempered & tailored
Functions all come together as a layer cake, speed around the building is increased, and the walking distance becomes much less
The project is the largest single building the practice has ever taken on before (and could be for some time), in a location of climatic extremes – Beijing’s continental climate going from -20 degrees in the winter to 40 degrees in the summer. For these reasons alone, realising the
team’s design aims was no easy task. While ZHA had already built several projects in China and “knew how Chinese contracting worked,” the architect says there were many challenges working in this location. Though working so closely with the client proved beneficial in the long run, Ceccato says it proved difficult to meet the speed of programme they desired, to navigate national politics, and to ensure continued authorship and design fidelity throughout the project. “In any country, while the work needs to have a hallmark and identification of your practice, you must always temper and tailor your project to the capabilities and desires of that location,” notes the architect, explaining the methodology used to address these challenges. First, a risk management procedure was undertaken to identify buildability with the technological capabilities and budget that would be available, as well as produce a realistic project time frame “on the assumption that the entire shell and core would be procured on the Chinese construction market,” says Ceccato. Then, the entire building was designed and modelled in 3D, starting with physical
WWW.ARCHITECTSDATAFILE.CO.UK
study models of different court areas and buildings, and eventually moving to full BIM construction models by the local partners which could be directly executed by contractors. Once completed, this allowed every contractor, all the way down to earth movement simulations for groundworks, to work together off a single model, ensuring their “unified vision” was executed as designed, and allowing the project to be constructed at pace.
Structure To achieve the project goals, it was necessary to prioritise use of materials most readily available to the team – largely concrete and steel.
The roof is perhaps the most impressive and challenging aspect of the design and construction, specified as a large scale steel frame built out of “cannon ball style” welded spheres.
Covering over 350,000 m2 , this large-
span structure is a complex hyperboloid steel grid containing more than 170,000 steel members, and supported by the C- shaped columns which seamlessly connect with the roof curvature.
Refining the design in conjunction with Buro Happold’s structural engineers, the team studied the structural configuration, loading, vertical support system reactions, and the deflection and displacement, in painstaking detail. In total, 38 different cross section sizes were eventually employed in the superstructure.
Sustainable example
Amplifying the pressure on this high-profile project still further, Ceccato says the client wanted to use the airport in part as a “showcase example of China’s achievements in sustainability.” As such, the project had to be designed and built to the China 3 Star environmental rating, which is the highest possible sustainability accreditation in China. To enact this, PVs are installed on the
airport’s roof to provide a minimum capacity of at least 10 MW, and centralised heating with waste heat recovery is supported by a composite ground-source heat pump system incorporating a concentrated energy supply area of nearly 2.5 million square metres. Complementing this, the airport also utilises a rainwater collection and a water management system that employs the natural storage, natural permeation and natural purification of up to 2.8 million
ADF FEBRUARY 2021
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92
