Flights of fantasy

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Main building, terminal 5, London Hathrow Airport (Morley Von Sternberg)

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AutoCAD image of social space at t5. (Rogers Stirk Harbour+Partners)

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Progressive sketches of the main building. (Rogers Stirk Harbour+Partners)

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Concept sketch. (Rogers Stirk Harbour+Partners)

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Nearly two decades in the making, Terminal 5 by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners has permission to land.

It's a well-known fact of international travel that inevitably, flights can be delayed. Similarly, any architect knows that projects can also suffer from considerable delays. So perhaps it should come as no surprise that an airport terminal could be stuck in ‘development hell' for nearly twenty years.

It was in 1989 that Richard Rogers Partnership won the competition to design Terminal 5 at London Heathrow. It is only now, in March 2008, that the project has finally been completed.

Much has happened in the last 19 years. Firstly, Terminal 5 is now a Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners project, reflecting the changes that have happened to the practice.

Meanwhile, the terminal design itself has been revised a further three times since the original competition winner, in response to feedback from both, client, British Airports Authority (BAA) and the general public.

Checking in

Concept Design 1 was the original competition winner put forth in 1989. Featuring a main terminal building which handled departing and arriving passengers on a single concourse level, baggage handling and technical services would take place beneath, at the undercroft level.

Terminal 5 featured the first in a series of undulating roofs that would recur in a number of Rogers Stirk Harbour+Partners projects in the 1990s, designed to filter controlled natural lighting into the interior of the building.

However, changing requirements resulted in a drastic reduction in the available site area. Questions were also raised over the long-term viability of and practicality of the single layer model. So Concept Design 2 segregated arrival and departure passengers.

This also led to a reconception of the operational spaces in the terminal, which would then be divided by ‘canyons', allowing natural light to reach the lower levels of the building.

This design was opened to public enquiry in 1995, but during the process of the enquiry, BAA, questioned the compatibility of the canyon design with the needs of the building. BAA wanted a terminal that could be highly flexible and adaptable, able to meet new priorities in the future.

The new, more ‘futureproof' Concept Design 3, anticipated the need for the building to respond continually to major new challenges, such as fast-track passenger processing, new airline alliances and configurations, the growth of retail and services, and the impact of ever larger and more complex aircraft.

These demands, in addition to changing security requirements, meant that the canyon concept was replaced by a more extensive and unbroken floor plan under a longer-span roof.

Cleared for take-off

The finalised design was officially opened in March 2008. The passenger areas are now all kept on one level, although they extend over two levels at the edges of the building.

Plant rooms, baggage handling and the other day-to-day infrastructure for the terminal are all carried out on a level below the passengers.

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