Zagreb Airport - New Passenger Terminal, Zagreb, Croatia

Riegler Riewe's proposal for the new terminal at Zagreb airport
For an airport terminal building meant to be placed amidst strong landscape elements of different 'natures', consideration of its own nature is of the greatest importance. Not as an afterthought but as an integrative element of the highly anthropised environment whose elements should imply consciousness of a new kind of abstracted artificial landscape.

The project formulates the idea of integral planning, where elements constitute the whole: from the large scale landscaping pattern along the runway to the monumental terminal hall interior spaces; from the overall traffic solution to the integral way daylight is brought into deep interior spaces and infrastructural ducts distributed. 'Natural' and 'technological' layers of this project constitute an integral infrastructural landscape.

'Airport City' is conceived as an abstract orthogonal matrix of volumes, surfaces and corridors that can grow according to different possible scenarios. Its non- hierarchical nature enables open arrangements of various future uses.

The passenger terminal consists of two distinguished parts; the multi-level terminal hall and the long pier in front of it. The terminal hall comprises departure, arrival and transfer floors connected to outside covered space under the huge canopy, offices and public facilities top level and technical basement level with a separate vehicle traffic access. The pier is merely a communication space positioned along the apron border as defined by the Zagreb Airport Master Plan.

The terminal hall is developed on a square plan, under the large flat roof of 167m x 150m. The roof is 5m thick, divided in 6m x 6m squares and supported by 'space columns' shaped like squeezed tetra pack prisms. This structure is enveloped by translucent glass plates thus bringing the daylight all the way down to the underground floors of the terminal hall.

The secondary structure of slabs that forms the functional floors of the terminal hall is structurally independent. The roof contains various technological aspects of the airport terminal building. Uniformly closed from the bottom side, it opens up to the aerial view exposing the most of this infrastructural landscape. The terminal hall is approached from the Airport City landside. Its large roof protrudes in the outdoor space thus forming a canopy supported by the same space columns.
source: www.worldarchitecturenews.com
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