There is already one international airport in Ashgabat, but it is located almost within the city limits and therefore cannot serve as a full-fledged transport hub for aircraft performing long-distance flights and cargo transportation. Meanwhile, the extremely favorable location between Europe and Asia literally pushes the capital of Turkmenistan to become one of the main transfer hubs in this region, and the country's leadership has decided to create new air gates. The site for their construction was chosen 35 km from Ashgabat; the new airport will be connected to the city by a high-speed monorail line and a highway.
Studio 44 is working on the architectural concept of the airport together with the construction corporation Vozrozhdenie, which is already building several large transport infrastructure facilities in Turkmenistan. The fact is that architectural competitions as such are not held in Turkmenistan - general contractors are fighting for the right to implement a particular project, and they take upon themselves the choice of architects. So the direct customer of the airport concept for Studio 44 is the St. Petersburg corporation, and the further fate of the project will be decided in Ashgabat after Vozrozhdenie presents it to the city and country administrations.
The project is based on national Turkmen patterns - the eight-pointed star of Oguz Khan and golis (the main elements of the composition of the famous Turkmen carpets). According to the chief architect of the project, Anton Yar-Skryabin, this is not just a tribute to the culture and heritage of Turkmenistan, but a prerequisite for the design of new objects in this country - the architectural image of each new building must absorb the richest local traditions of creating ornaments that fascinate with their complexity and beauty. How important these symbols are for the Turkmen can be judged at least by the fact that all five national gels are depicted on the state flag of the country, and the star formed by two squares serves as its emblem.
The idea of an airplane carpet came to the architects' heads almost immediately, as soon as they started working on the airport project. It is difficult to argue with the fact that this fabulous mode of transport perfectly reflects both the function of the object and perhaps the most famous "currency" of Turkmenistan - the fantastically luxurious and expensive carpets created here. In general, all that remained was to figure out how to beat him in the guise of a new airport. Of course, it was possible to “throw” the carpet onto the square in front of the passenger terminal, or even stylistically recreate the gölis between the runways, but the architects chose a more complicated path - they interpreted the bright carpet as the roof of the main airport building.
It is a gigantic multicolored canvas that seems to be fluttering in a scorching hot wind - the architects give it a pronounced undulating shape, thanks to which the roof, in fact, resembles that very fabulous flying carpet. In fact, it is a multilayer shell that reliably protects passengers from the scorching sun. The central part of the gels is made up of solar batteries, which, according to the authors' plan, will ensure the uninterrupted operation of air conditioning systems, and along the perimeter the "canvas" is supported by metal supports branching upwards.
The functional scheme of the new airport is traditional for such structures: on the ground floor there are cafes, shops, information bureaus and a waiting room, on the second, where the monorail arrives from Ashgabat, the arrival hall is designed, on the third - the departure hall, and the fourth floor, designed as a small mezzanine, reserved for restaurants. A spacious underground parking lot is located in front of the airport, and on its roof the architects have designed a shallow but very spacious pool, the bottom of which is decorated with another variety of national patterns. Passengers of descending planes and monorail trains, whose tracks run directly over the water surface, will be especially clearly visible to passengers of descending airplanes and monorail trains, and at night the pool will turn into a platform for a giant light show.
On both sides of the reservoir there are fountain complexes, and on the opposite side, at some distance from the main building, the authors of the project envisaged the creation of a VIP terminal intended for the top officials of the state. This small volume is a transparent crescent moon, in front of which a fountain is also broken. For security purposes, the entrance to it is organized underground, and it is reliably protected from the views of ordinary passengers by the dispatcher's tower.
In conclusion, it remains to add that both terminals are inscribed in an eight-pointed star, which, in turn, is surgically precisely inscribed between the two runways. The corners of this intricate figure are decorated with ornamentation, which is supposed to be created using green spaces. And even this seemingly purely decorative technique conceals an important symbolic meaning - green has been sacred for the Turkmens from time immemorial. Embodying the idea of prosperity and unity of times, in this case it will also symbolize a person's ability to withstand the scorching heat of the neighboring desert.
