The competition, announced on June 10 this year by the management company Airports of Regions (part of the Renova group of companies), was held in several stages. First, an open qualifying round took place: 21 architectural firms expressed their desire to participate in it, but only 11 were admitted, of which the jury formed a short list of 4 companies. These are Rostov-based LLC Proektservis, Asadov's Architectural Bureau and Nefa Research from Moscow, as well as Twelve Architects from London. It was they who, over a month and a half, developed their versions of the project of the airport complex "Yuzhny", which is supposed to be built near the station. Grushevskaya in the Aksai district of the Rostov region. According to the DonNews portal, the winner was supposed to be determined on September 19, but the votes of the jury members were divided equally between the concepts of the British and Asadov's bureau, so the organizers were forced to announce an additional super final - within three weeks the favorite teams were finalizing their projects and on October 10 they presented their experts. In the end, the Twelve Architects concept won by a slight margin.
The British based the project of the air terminal complex on the idea that the airport is not so much the air gate of a single city as a "bridge to the sky" connecting the most diverse cities and countries. Architecturally, this metaphor is embodied with the help of numerous parabolic arches of different heights, thrown from the square in front of the airport to the airfield. Some of these structures touch the ground, smoothly flowing into real bridges that lead through decorative ponds in front of the Yuzhny, others hang at some distance from it, turning into spectacular canopies over the main entrance. The architects propose to glaze the space between the arches - this will fill the airport with daylight and allow passengers to watch the takeoff and landing of aircraft not only through the windows, but also through the roof.
In the project of the Asadov Architectural Bureau, the southern heavenly gate of Russia was also embodied with the help of an arch - a shallow canopy on the main facade, which turns into covered pedestrian galleries above the adjacent square and the central pedestrian alley connecting the terminal with the parking lot and the railway station. The architects cut triangular skylights into the roof of the terminal, and the pond in front of it is also triangular in plan. Thus, they put together two "arrows" - heavenly and earthly, the first of which points in the direction of takeoff, and the second greets guests with a green public space.
As explained by the governor of the Rostov region, Vasily Golubev, who is quoted by the portal 161.ru, the jury ultimately preferred the Twelve Architects project for its great innovation and expressiveness, as well as the envisaged possibility of expanding the airport in the future.
According to the calculations of the organizers of the competition, the finalization and approval of the winner's project will take about a year, and in 2014 the construction of the Yuzhny airport, designed for 5 million passengers per year, will begin. It is assumed that over time, the new air hub will completely replace the existing Rostov-on-Don airport.
