New Mexico City Airport design unveiled by Foster + Partners

Mexico's New Mexico City International Airport's design was unveiled (03-Sep-2014) by Foster + Partners, who won the design competition in collaboration with Fernando Romero Enterprise (FR-EE) and Netherlands Airport Consultants (NACO), the firm confirmed. Highlights include:

• 555,000sqm single terminal building with 95 gates "enclosed within a continuous lightweight gridshell, embracing walls and roof in a single, flowing form, evocative of flight" and designed for Mexico City's "challenging" soil conditions;
• No internal trains or underground tunnels;
• Designed to accommodate expected passenger increases to 2028 "and beyond";
• Designed to be the "world's most sustainable airport" and only airport in the world certified LEED Platinum, with design works featuring rainwater collection, daylight direction and temperatures to be maintained with almost 100% outside air, leaving "little or no" need for additional heating or air conditioning;
• "Monumental scale" with three times the span of conventional airports and a maximum internal span of 170m;
• No ducts or pipes in roofing allowing "environmental skin" to be revealed, terminal instead serviced from beneath.

Foster + Partners chairman and founder Norman Foster stated, "Stansted Airport's reinvention of the conventional terminal in the 1990s was emulated worldwide, this breaks with that model for the first time. It pioneers a new concept for a large-span, single airport enclosure, which will achieve new levels of efficiency and flexibility, and it will be beautiful. The experience for passengers will be unique. Its design provides the most flexible enclosure possible to accommodate internal change and an increase in capacity. Mexico has really seized the initiative in investing in its national airport, understanding its social and economic importance and planning for the future. There will be nothing else like it in the world." The recently announced MXN120 billion (USD9.1 billion) airport will eventually have capacity for 120 million passengers p/a and its first phase is expected to be complete by late 2018 or early 2019. [more - original PR]