Rogers Stirk Harbour-led team to design new Terminal 3 at Taiwan Taoyuan Int'l Airport

Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners will be designing the new Terminal 3 at the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport.  RSHP teamed up with Taiwanese engineering firm CECI and their consortium in the competition, which also attracted proposals from experienced airport-design contenders Foster + Partners and UNStudio.

Formerly known as the Chiang Kai-shek International Airport, the Taiwan Taoyuan Airport is the country's largest and the 11th busiest in the world. Expected to accomodate 45 million travelers per year, the new scheme includes a new terminal building, boarding gates, concourses and a multi-use building, and transportation infrastructure. The new terminal is slated for completion in 2020.

Scroll down to check out the winning proposal.

Project description:

"The design for Taoyuan Terminal 3 synthesizes the practice’s previous major airport experience with the specific brief. It has brought together the flexibility of the single span, loose fit volume of Heathrow Terminal 5 with the warmth and human qualities of the flowing interior spaces of Barajas Terminal 4. The result is a unique, dynamic and fluid architecture that allows for easy adaption and future transformation of airport functions without compromising the passenger experience or the architectural integrity."

"The RSHP proposal is inherently simple in its concept. The design is inspired by Taiwan’s beautiful landscapes, the seas surrounding it, its rhythms of nature and life to create a series of unique interior places designed for their purpose and protected beneath an elegant hard shell roof. Within, a soft inner surface is malleable and dynamic to celebrate and form the ever changing spaces below. The nature of the interior spaces whether grand, intimate, uniform or dramatic and the extent of those spaces too can be changed.

Adjustable scaling will give passengers spatial clarity in all areas; large, small, busy or quiet, to reduce stress and improve wellbeing and comfort. This flexibility ensures the airport is always suitably presented as the principal gateway to and from Taiwan to the rest of the world. The terminal 3 building will be the first of a new generation. It will offer arriving passengers an equality of spatial experience to those departing. Its rational plan arrangement is forecast to deliver minimum connection times of just 40 minutes, the best in the region, with simple way-finding and airside connectivity."

In a statement, Ivan Harbour, a partner at Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners commented: 'We have worked in Taiwan for 15 years and have made many friends during that time. This competition is the product of a successful international joint venture with those colleagues. Our proposal is focused on a passenger’s experience with a deliberate strategy to absorb constant future change, whilst always retaining the integrity of its unique design. The terminal will be designed to meet the highest sustainability criteria; holistic engineering and architecture.

We have created a rationally planned and easy to use airport that will be characterised by a flowing sequence of beautifully lit, acoustically comfortable and well-proportioned spaces. It will be an airport where the drama of the spatial experience is shared by all, at all times. The approach to the airport and the open spaces within it will have an urban quality akin to a city centre. Addressing these spaces there will be a variety of buildings that, together with the new and existing terminals, will form the heart of a new compact, vibrant ‘aero’ city.'

The competition team for T3 comprised of: Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, CECI, Arup, Fei & Cheng Associates, Gillespies, The Design Solution, Fraport, OTC Planning & Design and BNP Associates.

All images courtesy of Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners.

More images in the thumbnail gallery below.