Landside Synthesis

Abstract

The rapid development of commercial aviation produced the contemporary airport in its wake: a synthesis of culture, consumerism and infrastructure. While airports have remained for the most part in peripheral locations, they have developed to a scale and complexity comparable with that of the city/town centre. Isolated, internalized, edge cites. The Queenstown International Airport is the fourth busiest in New Zealand, with passenger traffic figures set to double in the next 25 years; the Wakatipu Basin in which it resides is currently the 2nd fastest growing population in New Zealand. A subsequent design hypothesis is established in line with the projected growth of both environments, questioning if an urban centre and an airport, two physically antithetical environments, can be synthesized if planned synonymously. A critique of the conventional terminal program is the primary initiator of a new form of development, along with design strategies for injecting the airport terminal into an urban environment. The physical design output of this thesis takes the form of an urban masterplan, contextualizing the town centre in relation to the existing built regions of the Wakatipu Basin, forming a framework to outwork the design of a new international airport at an architectural scale, investigating the implications of the program opened to a pedestrian environment.