A year ago, British architects issued a "declaration" declaring a climate and biodiversity emergency. From the full title "UK Architects Declare Climate and Biodiversity Emergency", the official name of the organization thus formed emerged: Architects Declare, "Architects Declare." Now it has been signed by more than 5,000 architectural workshops from all over the world, but at first there were only seventeen of them, but all of them are well-known, large, Sterling Prize winners. The largest among them were Foster + Partners, which published their own "sustainability manifesto" at the end of 2019.
But despite such important statements, the bureau last November presented a project for an "airport on the Red Sea", which should serve the eponymous new resort on the coast of Saudi Arabia. Preparatory work for its construction has already begun, it will open in 2022, the dunes of the surrounding desert served as a source of inspiration for the architects. The first phase of construction will also cover 3,000 hotel rooms on five islands and in two complexes on the mainland, and the project will be fully implemented in 2030, when the resort will be visited by a million holidaymakers a year. The area intended for building has not yet been touched by human activity, there are dormant volcanoes, deserts, mountains, and so on.
PRomo video "airport on the Red Sea"
Another Saudi project was unveiled this summer, an airport for the Amaal resort, also on the Red Sea. These "air gates" should open as early as 2023 and immediately receive a million tourists a year. The project is inspired by a mirage as a natural phenomenon, and the terminal building is adjacent to a large-scale land-art object, visible from the plane. Amaala will consist of hotels with 2500 rooms and more than 800 villas, apartments, "estates", as well as 200 shops, restaurants, sports and spa centers, leisure facilities. The resort will appear on the territory of the reserve named after Prince Mohammed ibn Salman.
Amaala airport promo video
Both resorts are conceived as resource-efficient, "Krasnomorsky", according to developers, will be 100% provided with renewable energy sources, including the airport. But the main thing in them is their unparalleled "exclusivity", hence - their own airline complexes of impressive size, designed to a large extent for private "jets". It is for them that air-conditioned hangars are intended, that is, there will be few passengers for each aircraft received and sent. The greater the impact on the environment, the less the real need for each flight - and at the airport in principle. At the same time, air traffic has made and is still contributing about 5% to global climate change, which makes it the most harmful mode of transport for the environment.
In the Architects Declare, there is a clause that signatories undertake to evaluate all their new projects in such a way that they help mitigate climate change, and encourage customers to do the same. There are other provisions there that do not fit well with these two new projects.
It should be noted that Architects Declare has publicly refused to “name and dishonor” its signatories for “harmful” projects, although without pointing out the case of Foster + Partners. According to the organization, not all the details of the context of the project are immediately "obvious", but the discussion is always useful, especially if the media and the professional community are calling each other to account and pushing each other to become better.
Another position was taken by the less visible and essentially anonymous organization ACAN (Architects Climate Action Network), which first began to loudly criticize Foster + Partners, which made it into major newspapers. On July 20, she wrote directly to the architecture firm with an open letter urging it to abandon the airport project for Amaala and suspend any work for aviation until the sector achieves zero carbon emissions.
It seems unlikely that Foster + Partners will meet these conditions even in part, and even there is little hope of a response to this letter. However, this story about the design of airports in an untouched or even a protected natural area for the richest part of the world's population shows the complexity of architectural activity, on the one hand, since the beginning of the 20th century, it has been invariably striving for the progress of mankind (or at least declaring this desire), and on the other hand, it is forced remain almost completely dependent on external investments, that is, the customer.
