The award recognizes buildings that have passed 25-35 years since their commissioning (the terminal opened in 1981), but which have not lost their value as outstanding architectural structures and perfectly correspond to their function from the point of view of today.
The Hajj terminal of the King Abdul Aziz Airport with an area of 260 thousand m2 (the total area of the adjacent territory is 50 hectares) is designed for use only during the Hajj, when millions of Muslims visit Mecca in six weeks (in 2009 there were 2.5 million). This specialization left a decisive imprint on the project: firstly, the religious and cultural purpose of the building as a starting point of pilgrimage became key (Mecca does not have its own airport, so you can only get there from Jeddah, by land transport). The second aspect is more practical: due to the huge number of arrivals, they have to wait in the terminal from 24 to 36 hours until the bus can take them to Mecca.
To solve these problems, SOM employees, Pritzker Prize winner Gordon Bunschaft and distinguished engineer Fazlur Khan, turned to local tradition, more precisely, the construction of the tents of the Bedouins of Arabia. The result was the idea of a tapered awning structure supported by steel cables and 45-meter supports. Each of the two "shells" of the terminal consists of 105 such sections, covered with a nonwoven fabric with a Teflon outer layer. It allows light to pass through, but it keeps the heat from the sun's rays in check, so the temperature there is kept at about 26 degrees Celsius, although it reaches 50 degrees outside. The structure has no walls, so it is naturally ventilated, which makes it quite "green", although the LEED standard appeared much later.
Inside the terminal, in addition to the usual areas of passport control, baggage claim, etc., there is a huge space for those waiting for transport to Mecca: there are benches for rest, areas for cooking on an open fire, as well as cafes, information desks, branches of banks and shops. There is a green "boulevard" between the two buildings.
At the time of completion, it was the largest cable-stayed fabric floor in the world. In the early 1980s, the Hajj Terminal received several national AIA awards and the Aga Khan Prize, and even then, along with a brilliant technical solution, the subtly thought-out architectural image of the building, its "soft monumentality", was noted. It should be noted that this construction is already the fifth SOM work to receive the 25 Years Award. Prior to her, the skyscrapers Lever House in New York and the John Hancock Center in Chicago, the Air Force Academy Chapel in Colorado Springs and the Weyerhaeuser headquarters near Tacoma in Washington state were noted.
