Brandenburg Colonnades

2024 Author: David Durham | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-01-09 00:52

Berlin Brandenburg Willy Brandt Airport (BER) has a capacity of 27 million passengers per year, expandable to a capacity of 45 million. At the moment, it ranks third in Germany in terms of size - after Frankfurt am Main and Munich. Its purpose is to replace all the airports existing in the capital - West Berlin Tegel and East Berlin Schönefeld, as well as the pre-war one, located in the middle of the Tempelhof urban development, which closed in 2008. The site for construction was chosen near Schönefeld on the southeastern outskirts of Berlin.

Berlin-Brandenburg was conceived back in the 1990s, when Germany and Berlin were rebuilt in accordance with a new single status. Gmp, with their extensive portfolio in all genres, including aviation, won the competition in 1998. The results were canceled in 2003, but in 2005 the architects won the next competition, held under the new tender legislation.

Аэропорт Берлин-Бранденбург Фото © Marcus Bredt

Despite the growing need for a new airport - Tegel and Schoenefeld were built in completely different political, social, demographic conditions and could hardly cope with the growing flow of passengers - the construction of the BER, which began in 2008, was delayed, and the problems arose, as usual, not at all because of architects, but because of politicians who decided to save money and thereby increase their popularity among voters. As a result, difficult-to-fix problems appeared in the finished building, it was empty for many years, and as many as nine have passed between the planned opening in 2011 and the current date. Therefore, in the 2010s, the BER was, along with the Elbe Philharmonic in Hamburg, by Herzog & de Meuron (

read more here) the largest and most famous long-term construction project in Germany, if not Europe (you can learn about the twists and turns of the airport's fate here).

The architects of gmp, despite their vast professional experience, where there was also a court won against Deutsche Bahn over their distorted design of the Main Station in Berlin, were obviously upset by this turn of events, which cast a shadow on their competence. An exhibition at the Venice Biennale 2014 about Tegel and BER and other airports designed by them commented on the situation"

Too good. Two. Be true”(we wrote about it here) and written by Meinhard von Gerkan, co-founder and co-director of gmp, who led the Berlin-Brandenburg airport project, the book“Black Box BER”(“Black Box BER”, 2013).

But let's hope that this difficult story is finally over, despite the not very successful opening moment due to the pandemic, and the new airport will go into operation without any problems. This will happen on October 31 at 14 o'clock, when two planes will land there - of the companies Lufthansa and Easyjet, and on November 1 the airport will already start sending flights.

The terminal, rectangular in plan, is inscribed in the U-shaped frame of the “piers” with boarding gates: a symmetrical, almost classicistic composition is obtained, supported by a clear axis of development of the ensemble. It also includes parking buildings, various technical facilities and the Airport City with offices and hotels. This unexpected reference to tradition is supported by all sorts of "colonnades", according to the architects, - a typical structure for Berlin and Brandenburg. Obviously, this means city and country palaces and museums. Along the main, longitudinal axis - the access highway and the railway run along it - landscaping is deployed, also inspired by the local flavor: pines, lindens and meadows.

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1/3 Berlin-Brandenburg Airport Photo © Marcus Bredt
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2/3 Berlin Brandenburg Airport Photo © Marcus Bredt
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3/3 Berlin-Brandenburg Airport Photo © Marcus Bredt

The airport, according to the authors, boasts the shortest passenger route distances from the plane to the exit and vice versa in Europe. This is achieved, among other things, with a well thought-out modular system. It is based on a supermodule of 43.75 m - the necessary width for parking the most popular Airbus A320 in the sky over Berlin. If you divide it by seven, you get 6.25 m - this is the main module. 43.75 m was used in the layout of the "piers" and as a span between the 30-meter columns. In other cases, a 6.25 m module was used, as well as intermediate options that reduce it to a human and even smaller scale (125 cm and 32.25 cm), down to the pattern of Jurassic marble slabs on the floor.

In addition to the modular system, the overall image of the terminal with a total area of 326,000 m2 was unified by a design guide created by gmp, covering everything from urban planning solutions to furniture. It will help expand the airport in the future: the apron is intended for this from the west (the main entrance and access roads lead to the terminal from the east, and two runways run parallel to the longitudinal axis from the north and south). In the meantime, the instruction helped to create a coherent project, despite the large number of gmp partner companies (the main one was JSK International Architekten und Ingenieure mbH).

For the convenience of passengers, the railway station is located right in the underground tier of the terminal, and the streams of people are separated almost at the entrance. To do this, bridges lead from the main building to the “piers” with “gates” - two-level bridges in the flight sector in the Schengen zone (for arriving and departing passengers) and three-level bridges for traveling outside the “Schengen area” (the upper level is reserved for them).

You can admire the planes through the 20-meter all-glass facades: there are only horizontal profiles of the cable-stayed system, so the view is almost not obstructed - and the interior is filled with sunlight, saving electricity. At the same time, the relative glazing area in the building is relatively small, which prevents energy losses.

The elegant columns are tapered at the top and bottom to draw attention to the "work" of the structure. The roof with a total area of 49,000 m2 rests on them: its 50-meter extension is the basis of the terminal image. From the inside, it is covered with a polymer membrane, behind which the lamps are placed: this makes the lighting soft.

From the bright main departure / check-in hall, passengers can access the observation deck overlooking the airfield, as well as the Space of Silence, Christian chapel and interfaith prayer space. His project was the subject of a special competition, which was also won by gmp in 2011 (we

wrote about it then and hope to tell in more detail in the near future).