Simon Sellars: Sleepy Brain Archives

by Herman U. Ticks

photos courtesy www.greatbuildings.com & http://www.hong-kong-hotels-network.com

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Hong Kong’s new airport on CHEK LAP KOK island was designed by Sir Norman Foster, the British architect also responsible for London’s Stansted Airport. CHEK LAP KOK’s terminal building is the largest covered space on the planet, and the airport has been built t o deal with 80 million passengers a year, a sum greater than the combined total for London’s Heathrow and New York’s JFK. In this special review, HERMAN U. TICKS gives the fruits of Foster’s labours the critical once-over…with surprising results.
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CHEK LAP KOK is the new Hong Kong Airport designed by Norman Foster. The omnipresent grey color of the interior may be trendy, but comes across, ultimately, as depressing and unnecessary (although a little green is introduced later).

Much of the facility seems unfinished, and there is a tacky, metal-and-plastic feeling to much of the airport. Much of the space
is unused, giving off an empty, cavernous feeling. A driverless subway train takes passengers from the registration and inspection gates to the boarding lounges. At night the train is shut down, so anyone taking a night flight has to make the daunting walk all the way from the final inspection gate to Gate 80.

PASSENGER ARRIVAL AREA
The air in the passenger arrival hall is stuffy. For an architect like Foster, who makes so much noise about his concern for environmental factors, this is a major flaw. Stuffy air is a result of the area’s wall-to-wall carpeting, which should have been replaced with linoleum, if the airport managers were not bone-stupid. There is nothing aesthetically or architecturally special about this area, except some unusually curved panels in the ceiling – a minor feature.

PASSPORT CONTROL
This area opens out through an arched entranceway. The journey from airplane to passport control is badly organised and confusing for arriving passengers. It has not been well planned by the Chinese authorities. Arrivals have to walk obliquely through a general-use lounge, whereas they should be channelled directly to passport control, as in American airports. Channels and pathways should be clearly marked. Passenger intake should be kept separate from other
areas. This would speed operations for all concerned and reduce passenger tension. Obviously none of this was factored in to the architect’s work beforehand.

BAGGAGE CLAIM
After much walking, new arrivals reach a huge baggage-claim hall. There is the smell of Chinese food, but the memory this hall leaves is ugly and utilitarian (but of course Foster is only a man). It is hard to find the doorway out of this hall, yet getting out is foremost in the new arrival’s mind.

The new arrival enters another huge, multi-use hall, where he or she can change money, eat at McDonald’s, or catch a train to the city. Nothing here makes one want to stop and look with awe or wonder. Remember some of the great murals that decorated the walls of public buildings in America during the 30s and 40s? Remember the grandeur of Grand Central Station, or even the majestic solidity of simpler train stations in the American west and southwest? Nothing here induces rest or relaxation. The space is not physically comfortable or inviting, just cold and sterile. But sterility from Foster is preferable to what he might do to overcome it. Anyone who thinks this is quibbling for its own sake might care to remember the grand, if kitsch, lobbies of the great early 20th-century hotels.

ARCHES BY METRO ENTRANCE
One of the aspects of the facility to maintain interest is the section fronting on the metro station leading to Hong Kong proper. It has the same sweeping arches that face the runway areas, with giant, curving struts of white metal and glass giving the appearance of dinosaur bones.

These arches abut directly onto the metro station. This is like putting a temple front on a truck loading dock. A mistake like this could only have happened if the metro station had been built after…without consultation with the architect. It means that passengers arriving by metro barely see the best aesthetic feature of the facility, and they most certainly will not be able to see it from departing planes. (Yet bringing a metro line directly into the airport is the best functional feature of the Hong Kong airport or of any airport. Planners in San Francisco, Berlin or Taipei could seem to manage this.)

DEPARTURE HALL
Passenger departure areas at Foster’s airport are so vast that passengers wander around pushing their luggage cart aimlessly – there is no centre to orient oneself. We may see here a trend toward an increasing coldness and impersonalism that modern architects delude themselves into thinking is good design.

The departure hall, at least one of them, is quite long and capacious. Small square structures that appear to be portable and (one hopes) temporary, along with housing restrooms, are placed at intervals along the centre of this hall. One user complained that bathrooms inside these structures were too small: they are big enough for a person using them, but not big enough for a luggage cart. This means carry-on luggage must be brought into the toilet stall to maintain security. Departure lounges are among the least pleasant areas of airports, but they could be made more user-friendly. The world waits.

FOSTER’S FATAL MISTAKE
Foster’s greatest mistake lies in the orientation of the vaults of the ceiling of the departure hall (he may have thought he was
designing a sailing ship, because the ceiling vaults of CHEK LAP KOK look like sails). The ceiling vaults are oriented diagonally, while the hall is a rectangle. If you are facing directly down the hall, a vault will begin at an arched window abreast of you, but will communicate with the arched window forward of you. The result is that when you look down at something at floor level you orient yourself according to the floor and seating plan of the hall, but when you include the ceiling in your gaze, which you must do to take a long view, your orientation becomes disrupted. You must continually readjust to the ceiling vaults, then readjust back when you look down. The result is that you become nauseated while sitting in the departure hall. This was not a minor detail, but a major feature of Foster’s design. The mistake contributes to the lonely and lost feeling the departure hall gives off. This was neither a necessary, nor unavoidable, feature of the architecture.

DETAILS
The windows seem to be fastened to struts resembling fasteners found in either camping gear or ships. From this we may deduce that Foster spends his free time mastering Kushingura in his camping gear or on a yacht. Foster appears to be obsessed with devices that fasten one thing to another. This is a minor detail in architecture, but here it is used ostentatiously.

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