PROJECT 81

"T3 TAOYUAN AIRPORT"

Roger Stark Harbour + Partners

The scheme will deliver a new terminal building, boarding gates, concourses and a multi-function building, along with transport infrastructure.

The practice, working alongside Taiwan engineering firm CECI, saw off competition from Foster + Partners and UN Studio to win the project. The jury said that it had been impressed with the ‘innovative planning and design’ submitted by RSHP.

The design for Taoyuan Terminal 3 synthesises the practice’s previous major airport experience with the specific brief. It has brought together the flexibility of the single span, loose fit volume of Heathrow Terminal 5 with the warmth and human qualities of the flowing interior spaces of Barajas Terminal 4.

The result is a unique, dynamic and fluid architecture that allows for easy adaption and future transformation of airport functions without compromising the passenger experience or the architectural integrity.

The RSHP proposal is inherently simple in its concept. The design is inspired by Taiwan’s beautiful landscapes, the seas surrounding it, its rhythms of nature and life to create a series of unique interior places designed for their purpose and protected beneath an elegant hard shell roof. Within, a soft inner surface is malleable and dynamic to celebrate and form the ever changing spaces below. The nature of the interior spaces whether grand, intimate, uniform or dramatic and the extent of those spaces too can be changed.

Adjustable scaling will give passengers spatial clarity in all areas; large, small, busy or quiet, to reduce stress and improve well being and comfort. This flexibility ensures the airport is always at its best and suitably presented as the principal gateway to and from Taiwan to the rest of the world.