At the time San Francisco International Airport opened as Mills
Field Municipal Airport of San Francisco in 1927, most of the San
Francisco Peninsula was pastureland. Over the years, new terminals
and hangars were built to satisfy the demand of increased air
traffic. Beginning with a small administration building of residential
character including horizontal wood siding and red cedar shingles,
the airport advanced to the larger San Francisco Airport Administration
Building. After continuous growth, in 2000 the airport was reorganized
and expanded into the vast, structurally iconic new International
Terminal.
The new building acts as a gateway between land and air, offering
a recognizable image to arriving and leaving passengers. It is
organized over five levels, making it America's first mid-rise terminal.
It receives multiple modes of transportation - linking cars,
busses, the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system and the internal
light-rail system.
According to Craig Hartman, design architect with SOM, the
terminal is »founded upon the qualities of light and lightness«. He
says of the new roof: »We conceived of it as a floating, sheltering
plane and as a symbol.« The building's position above several
lanes of traffic required a 380-foot long span between the central
columns - essentially the building is a bridge. Thus the building
itself is in a state of lift-off, offering the first step into the air for departure
or a transition space for arrival before the traveler really
gets back to the ground. The terminal is built on friction-pendulum
base insulators that allow it to swing in the event of an earthquake.
The roof trusses' shape evokes many possible associations, the
rolling Bay Area hills, the wings of airplanes, a bird in flight - all images
not unusual inspirations for airport designs, though in this
case especially elegantly achieved.
Anne-Catrin Schultz studied architecture in Stuttgart and Florence,
and earned a Ph. D. in architecture theory at the University
of Stuttgart. Following post-doctoral research at the MIT, she relocated
to the San Francisco Bay Area and worked for several years
with Turnbull Griffin Haesloop and Skidmore Owings & Merrill. She
has taught at the University of California in Berkeley and is currently
teaching at the California College of the Arts and at the San
Francisco City College. Timothy Joseph Hursley is an architectural
photographer living in Little Rock, Arkansas, whose works have
been featured in architectural journals and museums around the
world. At age sixteen, while still attending Brother Rice High School in
Bloomfield, Michigan, he became a photographic assistant and
apprentice of Balthazar Korab, a pioneer in modern architectural
photography.
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