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Saarinen's Beloved TWA Terminal and Air Travel for the Future: Can This Marriage Be Saved? | |||||||||||
Even a cursory glance at the current condition of the TWA Terminal at New York City's JFK Airport tells you that it ain't what it used to be: the proud Modern monument to the Jet Age designed by master architect Eero Saarinen in 1962. "Terminal 5," as it is known in the parlance of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which holds stewardship of the airport, has rushed to keep up with the increasing demands of air travel. Along the way, it has acquired concrete and sheet metal and all other kinds of accretions and add-ons just to handle burgeoning amounts of planes, cars, baggageand people. All appear to have suffered, not least the building itself, which can no longer keep up with the demands of air travel and has fallen into disrepair. Its owner, Trans World Airlines, bought out in June by American Airlines, is uncertain of its own fate and, by extension, that of its future relationship with the Saarinen terminal. Many elements of the existing building simply render it not a good terminal from a passenger's point of view, says Ted Kleiner, AIA, the Port Authority's assistant director for capital programs. There is no weather protection on the landside of the building, where arrivals and departures are mixed, as opposed to the now-standard bilevel departures and arrivals roadways for air terminals. TWA needed to add a baggage-handling wing to the building on the airside, blocking views arriving passengers would have had to the terminal. Inside, ticketing modules are underused, waiting areas are minuscule and therefore overcrowded, and the lengthy jetways are not models of accessible design. The challenge becomes providing customer service in a functional terminalwhile preserving a landmark. Master
plan offers the best chance for survival Part of the Port Authority's holistic approach includes a regionally connected train system, operational next year, that will connect the airport terminals with Jamaica station, hub of the Long Island Railroad. This vital connection provides easy access to midtown Manhattan's Penn Station, Brooklyn, and the length of Long Island. The air train will also make any terminal only minutes away from any other terminal, says Kleiner, allowing the 10 buildingseach designed independently now and in the original planto function as a whole. The
plan The plan to restore Terminals 5 and 6 is a public-private partnership between the Port Authority and major airlines, United Airlines chief among them. United has hired William Nicholas Bodouva & Associates of New York City, designer of JFK Airport's much acclaimed Terminal 1, to design the new facility. New York City's award-winning Beyer Blinder Belle will work on restoration of the Saarinen terminal. Pressure from preservationists to save the terminal led to extensive modifications in the Port Authority's original plan. Most significantly, the agency reworked its roadways into a fairly complex pattern that includes a departure lane that takes cars under the TWA Terminal's umbilical jetways, allowing the umbilicals to be saved. Preservation of the jetways allows for preservation of Saarinen's original parti, which called for entry into the main building and a processional departure down long hallways to a destinationnow to be the new terminal. Davidson explains that the major elements of the
current plan include: Keeping the profile of the new terminal as low as functional, so it does not overwhelm the landmark building. Depression of the aforementioned roadway on the landside of the TWA Terminal allows for them to be staggered. Although not directly stacked, the arrangement still achieves bilevel arrival and departure roads as well as this lower profile for the new terminal. Davidson says these major elements, plus connection to the new rail and road systems will allow the Saarinen Terminal to serve as the centerpiece for JFK Airport. Concessions must
be made On the other hand, the plan offers the building a new lease on life and returns to it its all-important context that has gotten crowded by makeshift additions. In a way, although the landmark building will share its space with the new terminal, the proposed design offers it more contextual breathing room than it has now by returning its surround in the form of an airside plaza and connections to the landside road and railways. "These is a lot of fluidity here," says Kleiner, based on the notion that there are still "wild cards" that will affect the timing and construction of the project. The status of TWA and how and if it will continue to function is a wild card, as is finding a new owner who will respect the landmark and treat it right. "We plan to write a very tight preservation scope," Kleiner says. However, it is this unknown that worries preservationists most. They fear that if the building is vacated, it will deteriorate to the point that the Port Authority will need to tear it down (click here). Walker S. Johnson, FAIA, chair of the AIA Historic Resources Committee, says, "While we applaud the attempts of the Port Authority to preserve the main building, we cannot forget that its fate is not cast in stone. There still is no tenant for the terminal." To offer protection for other icons of the Modern Movement, Johnson also points to the need for the National Register to reduce the age requirement for buildings to become National Historic Landmarks from the current 50 years to 25 years, as England and Canada already have done. Moving Ahead There are many precedents of successful adaptive use in which the original structure could no longer support its intended use and has been cradled by a respectful modern successor, points out preservation architect John J. Cullinane, AIA, Annapolis, Md. The AIA's own original headquarters, the 1801 Octagon House, now preserved as the Octagon Museum and foiled by the 1973 headquarters, albeit of much smaller scale, demonstrates clearly how the concept employed for the Saarinen's terminal could work. Our profession could find a lot to be proud of in this processnot the least of which is the collaboration among the public and private architects. The preservationists have led public opinion, perhaps evoking concessions that led to more of the TWA buildingand the parti that Saarinen intendedbeing preserved and incorporated into the design. The Port Authority architects have demonstrated vision and balance in finding a way to preserve the TWA Terminal and make it part of the new master plan. They are working with William Nicholas Bodouva & Associates, and Beyer Blinder Belle, whose track records give every indication of how the old terminal will be preservedskillfully and beautifullyand the new terminal will be designedskillfully and beautifully. Copyright 2001 The American Institute of Architects. All rights reserved. |
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