Southerly approach - Southampton airport in UK

Architectural Review, The, Feb, 1995 by Penny McGuire

Southampton airport is one of Britain's smallest, and has been created with much ingenuity on a small budget. This article is the prototype of a series in which we look at product application as well as at the formal and spatial qualities of a building.

Southampton Airport's new passenger terminal, designed by Manser Associates, was opened in December last year and is the first important part of British Airport Authority's plan to redevelop and modernise the site. The building, airy and civilised, is in essence a silver shed flanked longitudinally on both sides by a glazed gulley of light attached to a curving silver wing. Looked at head-on from the outside, the sweeping profile of the building is clearly related to those of the aircraft parked outside on the tarmac, and is an appropriate symbol of flight in a place so redolent with its history.

Once the meadows of North Stoneham Farm, the flat expanses were used in 1910 by Eric Rowland Moon as a base for flying his homemade monoplane Moonbeam Mk II. in 1932, Southampton Corporation established Southampton Municipal Airport and it was from here that, four years later Captain Joseph Summers, chief test pilot with Vickers Supermarine, took the prototype Spitfire (the plane that won the Battle of Britain) out on its maiden flight. Looking at Mansers' building, the ghosts of those early Spitfires, assembled and tested here, are made palpable.

Situated less than a mile from junction 5 of the M27, the airport has its own railway station. Arriving at the airport by train, passengers walk 50 metres to the terminal entrance. Entering the concourse on the north side, passengers check in before being processed through the central core of the building to the opposite concourse and the departures lounge. Logic dictated that the routes to and from the aircraft should be direct, with all landside facilities in the concourse to the north of the core, and all airside arrangements to the south.

The form of the building evolved out of the original notion, suggested by a restricted budget and context, of a hangar with lean-tos on either side It is a 90 x 64 m rectangle in plan and is composed of 11 steel frames on a 9 m grid. Concourses are contained beneath 25 m clear roof spans on each side of the three-storey office core. and are illuminated naturally by the glazed slots - which have the added advantage of permitting views from the management's offices over the concourse and of the aerodrome outside. Specially made curved and welded roof beams 515 of varying depth project externally to support sheltering canopies running along the sides of the building. inside, the beams are supported by diagonal ties and struts which transfer the loads of the lean-to roofs to the frame of the core building. This reduces the effective span of each concourse roof by about 5 m and thereby the cost of the beams, and sets up a structural rhythm down the length of the concourse beneath the glazing.

Curving roof beams over the core building span 14 m. The roof is designed as a diaphragm and consists of Plannja decking 507 supporting insulation and an external skin of silver sinusoidal aluminium sheeting. The cladding incorporates roof lights, penetrations, gutters and flashings in a smooth easy sweep from peak to eaves; rain water is collected at the lowest levels over the front and rear walls and directed into down pipes.

External walls along the length of the building are formed of structural steel studs supporting an insulated sandwich of cement particle board, mineral wool insulation and gypsum panels by Louisiana Pacific 512 inside silver powder-coated sinusoidal aluminium cladding supplied by Exterior Profiles 503, made to incorporate louvres, windows and doors. End walls are composed of aluminium curtain walling 521 connected to the sweep of the roof by sliding joints and rubber gaskets. Otherwise, there are sleek canopies over baggage handling equipment, made of steel frame, plywood decking, silver aluminium sheet edge and soffit cladding with single ply vinyl roof membrane 508.

Internally, partitions are simple: of plasterboard and proprietary building boards on metal stud framework or etched glass 501. At ground level, the floor has a terrazzo finish 517 on a concrete slab, with mezzanine and first floors of precast, prestressed concrete slabs spanning between the steel structure and providing structural cross-bracing.

One caveat has nothing to do with Manser Associates, but with the British Airport Authority's specification of furnishings. The design of concourse seating, for example, does not match the cool airy spirit of the building. In particular, the ersatz folksy insertion of the catering chain, Bewley, is quite hideous. Its corporate identity, apparently including a bricked-up fireplace, has been unadulterated. The same apparition has been foisted on Stansted. It must be possible to find an acceptable compromise.

After the War, in 1948, the airport was nationalised and subsequently passed through various hands before being bought by BAA. Investment by that authority (though admittedly only [pounds]23m - not a large sum in the circumstances) suggests confidence in the airport's future as the focus of a communications network with international as well as national links.