Flight Dock

This is an article from the Architecture Australia archives and may use outdated formatting


Front (west) facade from the car park.


Shopping level and atrium.














Ground floor entry foyer and escalators.














Detail of the column and roof structure.













More photos can be found
in the version!

Review John Hockings Photography David Sanderson


Despite disturbing elements, Brisbane’s new air terminal is a distinguished international gateway. The architects are Bligh Voller and Lend Lease Design.

Last September, Brisbane opened its new International Terminal, on budget and ahead of schedule. Highly successful in many respects, and already well received by the public, the long-awaited building represents the most recent investment in the gradual modernisation of Brisbane Airport.

Sitting some two kilometres south along the runway from the domestic terminal, also designed by Bligh Voller, the complex adds one more element to a developing and well-built infrastructure designed to take Brisbane and Queensland confidently into the next century as large-volume tourist destinations.

The two issues which lie at the heart of successful airport terminal design are circulation and flexibility. With the capacity of any airport as dependent upon its ability to move passengers through the terminal as upon its ability to process take-offs and landings on the runway, it is essential that people and baggage move efficiently from the land side to the air side of the terminal, and vice versa.

Potential bottlenecks occur at the points of passenger processing, both arrivals and departures, and at the land side front door where passengers are picked up and dropped off. This vehicular/pedestrian traffic mix is the most difficult to handle and is typically dealt with by dividing the building in section so that pick-ups and drop-offs occur on separate levels. A two-storey solution also has the advantage of reducing maximum travel distances from hall to aircraft, even if average distances are the same for single and two-storey solutions.

On the other hand, a single-level hall of column-free space would generally be seen as the ideal solution to achieve the degree of flexibility required to meet the rapidly advancing technologies and varying programmatic demands of airport design. Building over two levels increases loads and therefore compromises that come when upper and lower halls have different planning prerogatives.

Accepting a certain loss in flexibility for the greater clarity of the multi-level solution, the Brisbane terminal stacks over three levels, all above ground to avoid a high water table. Still only one-third of its projected size, the main hall sits as a lustrous steel and glass volume sheltering under an elegant, lightly bent and broadly overhanging roof which rises to a ridge some 27 metres high.

The check-in hall occupies the privileged location under this wonderful umbrella roof and is developed as a naturally lit and highly transparent single volume with clear and dramatic views from the entry doors on the western, land side, through a thinned out forest of branching steel columns across to the aircraft and runways to the east.

Departing passengers are moved through seat allocation directly to a central skylit atrium where they are strangely turned back on themselves before dropping to a lower half-level where they proceed through security and passport control into the departure lounge. This sectional separation cleverly positions the upper public check-in hall as a mezzanine overlooking the lower transit lounge with views to the aircraft from both spaces, and allows friends and relatives the unusual and exciting opportunity of continued visual and aural contact with departing and transit passengers through an almost invisible but secure screen wall of fine wire tracery.

One level below all this architectural drama, arriving passengers are directly processed in the opposite direction out to an arrivals hall and off to waiting coaches or the carpark. This distinction unambiguously highlights the commercial imperative of contemporary airport design. Departing passengers are flush with currency, are already in holiday shopping mode and have upwards of an hour to be relieved of their cash. Every attempt is therefore made to keep them in the central shopping zones, and even the public viewing mezzanine keeps farewelling friends in the terminal and around the commercial zone for an hour longer than most other airports.

Indeed, where once the driving metaphor of airport design focused on the tectonic, the drama and romance of movement and flight, it seems now to have been displaced by the thrill and hedonism of being ‘on vacation’, that long saved-for occasion where one has the chance, for x days and x plus one nights at least, to live above one’s means in hotel lobby luxury and to shop until one drops.

Ultimately this leaves the building with a strange ambiguity. Extract the shops and the palm trees for a moment and you have an exciting, innovative and purposeful space with strong and subtle references to landscape context and place. The building is delightfully clear in both plan and section; the structure is efficient and honest; the broad, daylit, horizontal spaces and their integral artworks seamlessly connect with the flat surrounding landscape of the river mouth and a number of local landscape features including the Gateway Bridge, the city centre and even the Glasshouse Mountains.

Clumsily inserted within this relative refinement is a layer of commercial artifice, less-than-honest structure and unconvincing landscaping. Well-intentioned no doubt, the Noosa-style references in the shopfront awnings, the third-storey palm trees and the pretend open-air parasols mistake advertising image for true sense of place and identity, and though possibly popular with punters, seem amateurish and provincial within what is undoubtedly a shell of considerable distinction. Unfortunate too, given the quality of the building it all but hides, is the roadbridge which arches across the facade: its design and detailing share nothing with the remainder of the terminal. Visit at a quiet time of day and these negatives are noticeable, but once the building fills with the buzz of 1500 passengers an hour, its true qualities stand out and one realises that Brisbane finally has an internationaly gateway of which it can be proud.


John Hockings is Acting Dean of the Department of Architecture at the University of Queensland.

NEW BRISBANE INTERNATIONAL AIR TERMINAL, BRISBANE
Architects Bligh Voller Architects with Lend Lease Design—Chris Clarke (project director); Chris Clarke, Phil Tait, Jon Voller (Design); Noel Park (project architect). Retail Design and Project Review Lend Lease Design—Ross Bonthorne. Structural, Civil, Electrical, Mechanical and Services Engineers Connell Wagner. Hydraulic Engineers Ledingham Hensby & Oxley. Landscape Architects Belt Collins. Lighting Consultant Lighting Design Partnership. Acoustics Robert Fitzell Acoustics. Quantity Surveyor WT Partnership. Art Consultant Jean Battersby & Associates. Graphics Emery Vincent. Builder/Project Manager Civil & Civic. Developer Federal Airports Commission—John Tabart (project director).

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Published online: 1 Jul 1996

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Architecture Australia, July 1996

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