Celebration of arrival and departure : airport as threshold between sky and ground

An airport terminal building celebrates arrival and departure as the gate to a city and the sky. However, many contemporary airport terminals do not play the role as a gate. Circulation is often uninspiring and monotonous, and as a result disengages the city from the sky. These terminals adopt the "Uniform Circulation" which let passengers simply move from one side to· the other. This circulation comes from not site conditions but operational requirements. This thesis explores airport terminal design with an alternative circulation coming from site conditions. In Kagoshima, Japan, I propose an airport terminal building designed as a gate. Kagoshima City is located close to Sakurajima, an active volcano visible from the site. The volcano offers a contrasting marker between sky and ground, a natural counterpart to the man-made gate that is the airport.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

1998

Author dc:creator

• Watanabe, Yoshiyuki, 1966-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Michael McKinnell.

• Architecture.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/70715

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/70715