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34 | 7

35 | 7

AIRPORT TERMINAL ,
MADRID , S PAIN
ARCHITECT
RICHARD ROGERS
PARTNERSHIP

36 | 7

Trudging at midnight along Gatwicks deserted corridors to board a

six hour late ight to Madrid, it struck me that Gatwick epitomises all
that is worst about the modern airport experience. The queuing, the
disorientation, the anomie, the slog of physical distances, the lack of
daylight and the endless shopping malls as a substitute for any kind of
interior life. Doubtless Gatwicks designers and mood managers thought
that a gaudily coloured carpet would alleviate the route march to the
departure gate, but the effect was like putting lipstick on a baboon.
In common with its bigger and more unmanageable sister Heathrow,
Gatwick favours the Belly of the Beast model of passenger processing.
Inside the Beasts Belly you could literally be anywhere. Dallas, Dacca,
Dresden, Darwin; guess where you are from the carpet in the corridors.
Truly, the airport is everywhere yet nowhere.
These are familiar protestations but worth restating. Fuelled by the
phenomenal growth of air travel the airport has become a necessary
contemporary evil, but any building type dened by such unforgiving
parameters (passenger ows, aircraft regulations, security paranoia,
rampant commercialism and uninhibited bigness) would struggle to be a
thing of inspiration.Yet within its short lifespan (it is only 70 years since
Gatwick was a shed in a eld) the airport has also suffered from a kind of
hideously accelerated development. There are no archetypes to inspire or
refer to, only a parade of rapidly obsolescing mutations. While most cities
can muster a memorable church, city hall or museum, the memorable
airport is far more elusive. A quick roll call of notables might include
Pianos Kansai, Fosters Chek Lap Kok, SOMs Haj Terminal in Mecca,
Saarinen at JFK, and Charles de Gaulle in Paris. And, of course, Stansted
(AR May 1991), Fosters romantic vision of a sleek techno-shed in a eld,
still maintaining its dignity no matter how many branches of Accessorize
it is obliged to accommodate.

To this woefully short list can now be added Richard Rogers new
terminal at Barajas airport in Madrid. In terms of physical size and
political ambition, the new terminal is a very heavy hitter designed to
increase Barajas current annual capacity of 25 million passengers to
70 million. This will make it Europes second busiest airport and also,
crucially, one capable of accommodating the new A380 Airbus, the
next generation of 800 seat super jumbos. Madrid is a natural locus of
exchange between Europe and Latin America and this latest tranche
of airport development, which includes two new runways, aims to
strengthen the historic umbilicus between Old and New Worlds. After
years of playing second ddle to Barcelona, Madrid is feeling expansive
again, with a revitalised Barajas seen as a key aspect of civic and economic
image making.
Such a highly charged agenda has helped to give an almost unbelievable
impetus to an exceedingly large and complex project. Construction
drawings, for instance, were completed in a mere ve months.
Comparisons with Heathrows Terminal 5, Rogers other major airport
project, are sadly instructive. Even at twice the size of T5 and begun
eight years after it, Barajas is now complete, and its development (unlike
T5s which was mired in a planning and bureaucratic morass), seems
like a model of clarity and vision. From the rst enlightened move of
hiring a British architect (this is Rogers rst Iberian job but his project
team worked closely with local rm Estudio Lamela), Barajas has been
underpinned by political will, a responsive client in AENA, the Spanish
airports authority, plus the room and the resources1 to build.
Circumstances were in place for Rogers to deliver and he and project
director Ivan Harbour have done so resoundingly. Barajas civilises the
numbing experience of air travel, humanising the ows and processes of
airport life and using them to congure a building of power and presence.

A
B
C
D
E
F
G

car park building

terminal building
satellite building
service tunnel
existing runways
new runways
existing terminals

G
C

F
E
F
2
The rippling roof
unifies the volumes
of concourse and
boarding pier. Car
drop off is on the
far right.

site plan

37 | 7

Though the design was rst begun in 1997 as a competition proposal,

it still seems fresh and retains a spirit of dynamism and assurance. The
most obvious formal move is the undulating roof, suggesting a kinship
with T5, but Barajas also adopts the organisational model of Kansai (AR
November 1994). As at Osaka, a wavy roofed concourse building is
incised by multistorey canyons and linked to a single, immensely long pier
that contains the boarding gates. This arrangement has the advantages
of directional clarity (you are always moving in a linear progression
either to or from your gate) and allows natural light and even views to
trespass delightfully into what is usually a hermetic interior. And whether
conscious or not, there is also a sense of Rogers picking up where
Piano left off, taking Kansais generative concept of a soft machine that
persuasively fuses the biological with the mechanical, on to the next level.
Arriving by car2 gives the best rst view of the architectural
achievement. As you swing round to the north-west of the existing
Barajas complex, the new terminal appears as a vigorous wiggle in
the bleached altiplano landscape, like a back-of-the-envelope sketch
made esh. The shrug of the roof seems to mimic the heave and roll of
distant hills and there is a brief rainbow ash of colour. Cars dropping
off passengers glide under the roofs gull wing embrace, sweeping past
a vast parking structure for 9000 vehicles. The roof of the car park is
landscaped and its walls shrouded in gauzy metal mesh, softening the
impact of bulk. Six access silos boldly coded by superscale graphics add a
slightly surreal touch.

3
The landscaped roof of the
parking structure minimises
its bulk.
4
Welcome to Madrid. Vehicle
drop off and pick up under the
ultimate porte cochre.
5
Check-in hall. The roof plane
is liberated from the clutter
of service; sculptural freestanding funnels, for instance,
are used for air handling.

38 | 7

AIRPORT TERMINAL ,
MADRID , S PAIN
ARCHITECT
RICHARD ROGERS
PARTNERSHIP

Progress from check-in to departure gate is marked and measured by

the rise and fall of the roof and rhythm of its structure. The basic unit of
support is a Y-shaped assemblage of tapering steel members anchored
by concrete moorings. Painted signature Roger egg-yolk yellow, the
steel members form the angular branches of the arboreal structure
with the more massive concrete trunks extending down through the
building. Organised around a 18 x 9m modular grid, Barajas is actually
just a huge3 and potentially extendible kit of parts, with consequent
economies of scale in materials, detailing and construction time. Certain
elements that were specially designed for the project, such as the vaguely
anthropomorphic oor mounted air-handling units and wok-like light
ttings, have since gone into general commercial production.
Tempering this High-Tech rationale is a fair dollop of spatial and
experiential romance. The hypnotic swell of the roof creates different
sorts of spaces grandly lofty halls for check-in at its peaks, and more
intimate areas for waiting, eating and circulation at its troughs. The
obvious conceptual model is the market roof amiably sheltering teeming
humanity and a diversity of activities. Some critics have also suggested
that it also alludes to the rhythmic vaults of the famous Cordoba
mosque. Clad in thin laminated strips of Chinese bamboo (astonishingly,
each strip was individually xed by hand), the roof has a seductive, tactile
quality, like being inside a giant musical instrument. Even more lyrically,
project architect Simon Smithson likens the heaving geometry to being
underwater and seeing the surface of the sea softly rising and falling
above you, with shafts of sunlight percolating down into the depths.
Chracterised by tactful and imaginative handling of light and views,
Barajas has managed to break free from the dead hand of airport anomie.
Glazed walls offer a redemptive connection with the exterior, and the
harsh Madrid light is ltered and channelled around the interior through
a series of oculi in the rippling roof. Light catches the creamy oor of
Spanish limestone, turning it to a gleaming horizontal plane that brightens
the cavernous spaces. Most dramatically of all, light sears down into the
canyons, three parallel voids carved into the length of the building. As
an obvious means of funnelling daylight to the arrivals hall below, these
multistorey clefts also signpost the various stages of departure, from
check-in to aircraft boarding. At intervals, the canyons are spanned by
bridges, so departing and arriving passengers are periodically aware
of each other, helping to mitigate feelings of disorientation. While
the intermediate canyon provides contemplative views down into the
continued p56

cross section through main terminal building showing departures in red, arrivals in blue

cross section through satellite building

39 | 7

AIRPORT TERMINAL ,
MADRID , S PAIN
ARCHITECT
RICHARD ROGERS
PARTNERSHIP

1
2
3
4
5
6

public space airside

public space landside
horizontal and vertical circulation
retail
airport services
baggage transport system

PUBLIC SPACE AIRSIDE

PUBLIC SPACE LANDSIDE
HORIZONTAL AND VERTICAL CIRCULATION
RETAIL
AIRPORT SERVICES
AUTOMATIC BAGGAGE TRANSPORT SYSTEM
level 2

level 2

level 1

level 1

ground level

ground level
level -2

level -2

40 | 7

main terminal

satellite building

6
The great nave of the boarding
pier, with its kaleidoscopic
columns. Arriving passengers cross
by bridges to the upper level.

41 | 7

7
Baggage reclaim hall with
distinctive wok light ttings.
8
Canyon in baggage reclaim hall.
Departing passengers cross over
bridges at upper level. Light is
ltered down into the depths
through xed louvres in the oculi.

42 | 7

cut-away isometric of roof and canyon

AIRPORT TERMINAL ,
MADRID , S PAIN
ARCHITECT
RICHARD ROGERS
PARTNERSHIP

43 | 7

AIRPORT TERMINAL ,
MADRID , S PAIN
ARCHITECT
RICHARD ROGERS
PARTNERSHIP

baggage reclaim hall, the canyons at land and airside are lled with
the panoply of vertical circulation. Long banks of escalators and stairs
bestride the chasms, and curious glass lifts that might have sprung from
the imagination of Heath Robinson scuttle busily up and down. The
airside canyon is also lled with the inevitable monstrous regiment of
shops, but by setting clear protocols for t-outs, Rogers has tried to
contain the dismaying effects of commercial intrusion.
The 38 boarding gates are contained in a soaring treble-height pier,
with a further 26 docked on to the satellite building (a sort of minime version of the terminal), which is linked to the main complex by
underground shuttle. At three quarters of a mile long, the pier seems
innite, an elegantly elongated nave articulated by the repetitive march
of its arboreal structure. Along its length, the signature Rogers yellow
is amplied by the full range of the colour spectrum. This apparently
whimsical touch is partly an aesthetic decision, but it also assists with
orientation, the colour coding of the structure matching the signage for
boarding gates. As departing passengers head for the red, orange, blue
or green columns, this is the end of the line; beyond are the planes, the
runway and the sky. Arriving travellers make the journey in reverse,
docking into and across the boarding pier nave, communing with the
baggage reclaim oor at lower level and nally emerging into the
brilliance and bustle of the landside canyon. The new terminal is devoted
to Iberia, British Airways and their smaller commercial partners, with
budget airlines kept at some remove in the existing terminals.
The romance of Barajas belies the technical feat of its realisation. It
might all look effortless, but below stairs and behind the scenes is a
seething netherworld of operational spaces such as the vast subterranean
baggage-handling facility. Nothing stands still in this building for long,
and the continuous, relentless choreography of people, planes and stuff
shapes and animates the architecture. That there can also be scope in
this huge, impersonal machine to create humanely scaled, dignied and
even sensuous experiences is the buildings remarkable trump card. With
Barajas, the airport as a type nally seems to have reached an important
benchmark in its short and unsatisfactory evolution, the grubby
caterpillar nally transformed into a buttery. Is it too much to hope that
the civilising mission of Rogers Spanish soft machine can help set the
agenda for the next generation of airports? CATHERINE SLESSOR
The budget for the main terminal, satellite and car park was 1238 million. The total Barajas
development budget was 6000 million.
2
The proposed train link from the new terminal to central Madrid is still under construction; it should be
completed next year.
3
Total built area, including parking and access roads, is approx 1 100 000sqm. The main terminal is
470 000sqm and the satellite 290 000sqm.
1

44 | 7

10

9
Waiting and shopping boarding
gates with retail units. Rogers
has attempted to minimise the
impact of commerce.
10
Airside canyon for arrivals,
animated by the panoply of
vertical circulation.
11
Connection with the exterior
makes passengers feel as though
they are somewhere.

Architect
Richard Rogers Partnership, London
Associate architect
Estudio Lamela
Structural & services engineers
INITEC Tarmac Professional
Services
Structural design
Anthony Hunt Associates
Facade design
ARUP Facades
Lighting consultant
Jonathan Speirs
Photographs
Duccio Malagamba

11

45 | 7