Airports are no longer aviation sheds exiled to the periphery of the city – they are cities in themselves.

Our investigation of this phenomenon was guided by two possible concepts of the airport as a typological idea of the city. The first points to the possibility of the airport as urban core – dense, congested, overlaid with rich programmatic accumulations and served by high-speed, inter-modal transportation networks. The second imagines the possibility of the airport as city of exacerbated difference (COED) and draws upon its role as a new breed of city centre, strategically positioned as a counterpoint to the traditional city centre it serves. 

As a response to these two concepts, we arrived at three main typological ideas of the city:
Autonomous punctuators reimagine new airports as the seed for new cities on virgin land (and water). This idea begins by abandoning existing airport sites that are beyond redemption. For Deena, this opportunity for new beginnings uses the airport as both an Islamic university and a hajj-pilgrimage hub that ultimately forms new city-gateways into the Holy City of Mecca. In Martin’s proposal, a new airport for London straddles the Thames Estuary, envisioned as a stacked linear airport superseding the current Heathrow sprawl; part bridge, part airport, part linear city.

Consolidated limits reimagines the existing airport as a clear physical limit for the growth of the city and the airport itself. The projects by Yifan and Jeeseon reconsider the question of monumentality and iconicity in the design of Asian airports. These characteristics are subverted to enable the emergence of a more inclusive and pliant city structure while maintaining a clear limit and legible figure as a diagram of organisation and power.

Dispersed mats reimagines the airport as variations of the mat-building. The projects by Kevin, Sungji and Udayan begin by dislocating the traditional airport terminals from the runways. The terminals are then further broken up and reinserted into the fabric of existing cities, setting up a symbiotic relationship between the host city and airport. 

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