Design & construction
Opening page: BER opened in October 2020, nine years later than expected.
Right: The airport is spacious and airy, thanks to its natural lighting and wood panelling design.
the design is very much what the architects envisioned all those years ago.
€7bn Business Insider 700k
Passengers passed through the airport within its first three months of operation.
BER 14
month before the grand opening, the date was pushed back again due to serious fire safety concerns. In the years since then, the airport has grappled with issues including, but not limited to: personnel changes at the top; a corruption scandal; airline insolvency issues; problems with the cabling system and faulty control of the automatic doors. As costs edged towards €7bn (up from an original projection of €2bn) some wondered whether Berlin’s money- guzzling ‘ghost airport’ would ever see the light of day. As of October 2020, those grim speculations have proved unfounded. BER looks poised to be the third-busiest airport in Germany once air traffic returns to normal. Terminal 1, its main building, will be able to handle around 25 million passengers a year, while the airport system as a whole has the capacity for 40 million.
Approximate total construction cost of the BER.
This includes the former Schoenefeld Airport, now redesignated as Terminal 5. Terminal 2 is yet to open, while Terminals 3 and 4 are satellite terminals that – in light of the present dip in passenger numbers – may stay that way for some time.
Simplicity is back in style In contrast to the complexities (and heavy retail focus) of many recent airport designs, BER offers a refreshing simplicity. Designed by German architects gmp, the firm behind Tegel Airport’s expansion in the 1970s, it is based around geometric models, and is clean and minimalist in style. Despite the time between conception and completion – gmp won the competition in 1998 –
“An airport is not a building but rather a process,” says Hans Joachim Paap, associate partner at gmp. “Meinhard von Gerkan [founder of gmp] once told me when I was his student, ‘To design an airport you have to think in decades’. That means you have to create a robust structure with the emphasis on good orientation, and an inviting and attractive interior. While airports are first and foremost complex transport interchanges, for people they are also emotional spaces where we say goodbye and where we arrive at a specific place.” The construction setbacks, it should be emphasised, were predominantly engineering related and didn’t have much to do with the design itself. Nonetheless, the stop-start process did pose an architectural challenge – how could the team deal with capacity demands that were growing all the time? During the many years of delays, passenger numbers at Berlin’s two existing airports were increasing by about 4% a year. Tegel Airport, which was originally designed for 2.5 million passengers a year, was handling nearly ten times that number by the end. “The fact that Berlin was experiencing a disproportionate increase in traffic volume – something that should really be welcome – created a growing demand for increased capacity, even during the construction phase,” says Paap. “Knowing today’s requirements regarding capacity and security, and knowing the amount of money that was finally spent on the project, we would have provided more space in the passenger area of the airport from the beginning. One thing is clear – adjusting the design as a reaction to changing demand is no way to proceed.” He remarks, however, that there is nothing in the overall concept that they would change and the basic configuration of the facility has remained the same. “For a design task of this size, this is remarkable and an early indication that it will be possible to maintain design continuity during any future expansion stages,” he says. “Airport design must always allow for extensions as part of future developments and changes without compromising the system as a whole.”
A modular concept
Right from the outset, the architects aimed for an overall modular structure to accommodate these changes. The entire scheme was developed using a basic horizontal grid of 6.25m (which, multiplied by seven, corresponds to the parking width required for a category C aircraft).
All dimensions – such as the distances between the colonnades, the columns of the hall structure, and the passenger bridges – are based on this 6.25m length as the smallest common unit. It means that, in spite of the varying functions, a uniform appearance and spatial development could be achieved.
Future Airport /
www.futureairport.com
gmp
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