The Simferopol airport is already being actively modernized, and by 2018 it is planned to build a new airport complex from scratch, which will occupy an area of about 60,000 m2 and will allow to receive up to 8.5 million people a year. To solve this problem, a closed competition was held for the best project of the complex, to which, according to the airport's general director Evgeny Plaksin, “nine leading architects of the world” were invited to participate. Among them is the Moscow bureau UNK project.
Over the fifteen years of its existence, this workshop has managed to reach the level of large-scale architectural projects, such as residential areas, shopping centers, sports facilities and Moscow City skyscrapers. Several months ago, the UNK project won the competition for the design of the interior of the new terminal of the international airport "Bolshoe Savino" in the city of Perm - that is, the airport was already in their creative biography, but only in the form of interiors; The UNK project had not yet come up with a complete air terminal complex, and, according to Yuliy Borisov, they perceived this task as a certain challenge.
UNK project positions itself as a bureau “with Western principles of work”. Perhaps the main of these principles is the programmatic prevalence of function over form, that is, first the question of "why" is solved and only then - "how". In this case, too, the architects started with the essence. What is an air terminal? This is the place where the passenger goes directly after leaving the plane, having experienced several stresses at once: the flight itself, the change of climate, time zone, switching from operating mode to vacation …
As people who travel a lot, UNK project architects are well aware of these feelings; Possessing solid experience in the design of objects that involve significant traffic, they are able to optimize the movement of human flows in such a way as not to add stress to the participants, but, on the contrary, to relieve stress as much as possible. As Yuliy Borisov says, it was important for them "to make such a non-urban airport, an airport-garden, so that it would be immediately clear: it is located not in a metropolis, but in an all-Russian sanatorium zone." Therefore, no less important task than the careful development of a transparent and ergonomic technological structure of the terminal building (functional zones are conveniently and logically located in a multi-height volume, the same can be said about the communications connecting them), was to ensure a smooth and psychologically comfortable transition of a person “to vacation mode " and back. The transition is literally: going down from the second level of the airport, where the arrival area is located, to the exit of the terminal building, the passenger does not experience the shock of being exposed to the scorching sun from the air-conditioned room. This became possible thanks to the main idea of the project - a common roof in the form of a rounded trapezoid, uniting the semicircular building in the plan, through the access road, with the station square.
The square, thus, turned out to be covered, but there is an abundance of light and air: air flows freely walk in a space devoid of walls, overhead lights provide enough natural light, a comfortable level of humidity is maintained thanks to the jets of the fountain located in the center. The facades of the terminal are completely glazed, so that visually the border between the interior and the external space is also almost not felt. Well, the square itself with cafes, shops, flower beds and a magic fountain, from the drops of which a water printer can create any inscriptions and images, according to the architects' plan, should become a center of attraction not only for passengers, but also for residents of nearby neighborhoods.
The main thematic associations associated with the peninsula have been worked out in the project as conscientiously as they are ingenious. What is Crimea? This is the sea - its waves were reflected in the bend of the roof above the platform. These are seagulls - and in the upper parts of the lungs, as if soaring up into the sky, snow-white Y-shaped pylons supporting the roof both inside and outside the building, one can guess the span of a bird's wings. This is water - and the round bowl of the fountain becomes the center of the station square, the jets of which form a transparent curtain around the perimeter of the square. This is the sun - and the light streams from the skylights in the roof are added to the natural light penetrating through the fully glazed facades (Borisov generally values natural light very much, considers it a basic concept in architecture and uses it skillfully). These are, finally, the famous Crimean wines - and the fanning rays of the parking rows, like those of Rafael Vignoli at Montevideo airport (Uruguay is also a famous wine-growing region), are interspersed with even rows of greenery, resembling rows of vineyards running down the hillsides. By the way, returning to the function: with such abundant landscaping of the parking space, cars in the heat should not overheat, and the driver on the way from the car does not risk burning out in the sun.
