=20 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This article was sent to you by someone who found it on SFGate. The original article can be found on SFGate.com here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=3D/chronicle/archive/2004/09= /18/DDGAP8PV0H1.DTL --------------------------------------------------------------------- Saturday, September 18, 2004 (SF Chronicle) No-thrill air travel has made the former TWA terminal obsolete, but still a= n architectural wonder Ulf Meyer, Special to The Chronicle Today, the experience of air travel conjures up thoughts of long lines at the ticket counter, probing security checks at the gate and bad food, if any, once you're airborne. But there was a time when flying was an elite way to travel, and airport architecture reflected that. The Trans World Airlines Terminal at Kennedy Airport in New York, for example, built between 1956 and 1962 by Finnish architect Eero Saarinen, is an amazing piece of Expressionist design that reflects the elegance and romance of flight. Its birdlike symbolism and cavernous interiors make it one of New York's greatest architectural attractions. Aficionados of the building, which has been closed since TWA went bankrupt in 2001, might be saddened to learn that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the airport, is building a new terminal that would incorporate the original TWA structure into a new building to serve that most visible icon of budget airlines, JetBlue. The approval earlier this month of a Y-shaped building, designed by the New York branch of Gensler Architects, headquartered in San Francisco, signals the dawn of a much more straightforward approach to airport architecture in the United States. The free-flowing, curving contours of Saarinen's jet age icon suggest a bird in flight. Inside, the soaring walls, carefully modeled staircases and seating areas are a blend of graceful sculptural forms that suggest the excitement of travel. Saarinen realized his initial intention: "All the spaces and signs, display boards, railings and check-in desks were to be of a matching nature. I wanted a fully designed environment, in which each part arises from another and everything belongs to the same formal world," as he stated in the book "Architecture of the 20th Century." He accomplished his goal of making the attractive, spacious halls offer a sense of exhilaration, which is unusual in an airport. He saw "a building in which the architecture would express the drama and specialness of travel, a place of movement and transition. The shapes were deliberately chosen in order to emphasize an upward-soaring quality of line." The winglike "sails" of the roof were made of reinforced concrete, and t= he structure is braced within the concrete by steel. Although TWA was bought by American Airlines, the great terminal was abandoned and at one point was even in danger of being torn down. Many noted architects rallied to save the masterpiece and succeeded in preventing a travesty. The airline industry as a whole has been in crisis since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, with several major airlines under Chapter 11 protection. During much of the same period, the low-fare airlines such as JetBlue have seen such tremendous and rapid growth that they now are building their own terminals. We might have seen the last of ambitious airport architecture. As carriers such as JetBlue are mainly concerned with offering ever cheaper ticket prices, the grand design of airport terminals is not high on their list of things to do. The terminal for JetBlue will be built directly behind and alongside the great TWA building. The new 625,000-square-foot terminal will have 26 gates. If construction starts on time this fall, a projected 20 million passengers a year will pass through the zinc-clad building as soon as 2008. The architects at Gensler, one of America's biggest corporate firms, did not even try to "challenge" Saarinen's architecture, according to Bill Hooper, the principal designer for the project. But the structure's "trim, low profile creates a respectful background to the TWA terminal," Hooper said. His scheme, he added, is "distinguished from the soaring concrete curves with its geometric lines and a taut metal-and-glass enclosure." Instead of a signature grand hall, the architect is concerned with a coo= l, lean look, durable materials, effortless transitions. A new roadway for departing passengers and a bridge extension from the Airtrain station will lead to the JetBlue terminal. After proceeding through ticketing and security areas, passengers will continue to the junction of three concourses, where there will be a food court. Since low-cost carriers typically do not serve free food on their flight= s, the food stalls have become an important preflight feature for travelers. Richard Smyth, vice president of redevelopment with JetBlue, says that "the design focuses on efficiency of movement and operational ease." What makes less sense is that the old TWA terminal will hardly be used. = It may be reserved for employee use, but passengers will not be flowing through it. The economics of airport terminal layout have changed since the '60s, of course, but the TWA terminal is timeless. A company like JetBlue, eager to become a hip brand, could improve its design image by reusing the TWA terminal, one of the most beautiful built in the United States and certainly the best known of Kennedy Airport's distinctive terminals. Continued use as a functioning part of the airport might be the best medicine for Saarinen's uplifting masterpiece. His other famous airport terminal building, at Washington Dulles, also completed in 1962, proves just that. There, the beautiful swooping roof of the terminal, now too small for the amount of traffic through the airport, was kept as a check-in area, and passengers are bused to their gates at several midfield terminals. The original building, however, is both a beautiful reminder of a more innocent era when the whole experience of flying was an adventure and a functioning part of the airport. The three main Bay Area airports are also affected by the new trends in airport design: San Francisco International Airport showed that it was willing to spend some extra money on grand architecture with the new International Terminal designed by Skidmore Owings and Merrill of San Francisco that opened in 2000. The city's new "front door to the world" was instantly regarded as a model of spatial clarity, in which orientation is intuitively understood and the structural solution is one with the architecture. Oakland Airport, on the other hand, is competing with a simple, cheesy terminal that appeals to budget airlines and travelers quite successfully: In April ground was broken for a new $500 million five-gate addition to Terminal 2. Gensler has also designed the new building at Mineta San Jose International Airport. Construction for this $355 million north concourse will start this fall, and two more concourses are planned by 2012. While some people love airports for their function as a point of departures and arrivals, others hate them for their confusing design. Airports just keep growing -- most are eternal construction sites and already too small when completed. This is especially true for American airports, where often airlines build their own terminals according to their own corporate identity rather than adhere to the dictates of a central authority as in Europe and East Asia where grand designs are still the rule. Ulf Meyer is an architectural writer from Berlin contributing to The Chronicle as part of the Arthur F. Burns Fellowship program. --------------= -------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 2004 SF Chronicle