Aga Khan Award for airport presented
Aga Khan Award for airport presented
By Amir Sidharta
JAKARTA (JP): This past week, the attention of observers of architecture of the Islamic world has been centered on Indonesia.
The Aga Khan Award for Architecture was presented in the Kraton of Surakarta, in Solo, Central Java last night. As the guests to the ceremonies arrived in Jakarta, they literally descended upon one of the twelve recipients of the largest architectural prize in the world, with awards totaling up to US$500,000. None other than Indonesia's gateway, the Soekarno- Hatta Airport in Cengkareng, is one of the recipients of this prestigious prize.
In the sixth award cycle 1992-1995, 442 projects were reviewed, 22 of which were evaluated in situ by technical reviewers. The twelve projects that were finally selected as 1995 recipients of the award could be grouped into three categories.
The Restoration of Bukhara Old City, Uzbekistan, the Conservation of Old Sana'a, Yemen, the Reconstruction of Hafsia Quarter II, Tunis, Tunisia, the Khuda-ki Basti Incremental Development Scheme, Hyderabad, Pakistan, and the Aranya Community Housing, Indore, India are considered to be projects that address a critical social discourse.
Falling under the category of projects with critical architectural/ urbanistic discourse are the Great Mosque of Riyadh and Redevelopment of the Old City Center, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the Menara Mesiniaga in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and the Kaedi Regional Hospital in Kaedi, Mauritania.
The Mosque of the Grand National assembly, the Reforestation Program of Middle-East Technical University, two projects in Ankara, Turkey, the Alliance Franco-Senegalaise, Kaolack, Senegal, and the Landscaping Integration of Jakarta's Soekarno- Hatta Airport are seen as projects that introduce innovative concepts worthy of attention.
The Cengkareng airport does indeed introduce a concept that may be considered innovative and worthy of attention. The master plan of the Soekarno-Hatta was developed by Aeroport de Paris with a design by Paul Andreu. As mentioned in the Report of the 1995 Award Master Jury, the architect envisioned "that visitors arriving at Jakarta would immediately gain a sense of place by experiencing the integration of building, nature, and climate that is unique to Indonesia."
Consisting of freestanding pavilions with open connecting walkways which face landscaped greens, the airport offers a rather unique experience to airline passengers arriving in Jakarta. After disembarking from the airplane and proceeding toward the baggage collection area, passengers encounter the landscaped gardens and get a glimpse of the natural environment of the region.
Meanwhile, the landscaped gardens also provide a pleasant environment in which passengers waiting in the departure lobbies on the upper level of the pavilions are able to see the layout of the gardens in its entirety.
The large openings of the corridor were literally open and left unscreened to ensure the feeling of openness. However, thick walls provided a security barrier, inevitably diminishing the impression of openness.
Ironically, despite the thickness of the walls, the architect failed to address the intense rain and wind conditions of the area, and in the past, the feeling of openness was exaggerated during the monsoon season. The unscreened openings did little to ensure that arriving passengers be completely sheltered from the wind-driven rain. The problem has required the addition of louvered windows to encase the fenestrations, diminishing even further the feeling of openness.
In the design of Terminal II, airport authorities requested the provision for air conditioning, which in turn required the installation of windows throughout the entire lengths of the corridors, causing a physical separation between the inside and the outside. However, the architect cleverly remedied the problem by extending the windows to the floor, thus allowing for a visual connection between inside and outside.
It is not the first time that a project in Indonesia has received the award. In the past, in four out the five award cycles, the Aga Khan Award has been given to projects in Indonesia. In 1980, the Kampung Improvement Program in Jakarta and the Pondok Pesantren Pabelan in Central Java was awarded the prize. The Kampung Kebalen Improvement in Surabaya and the Said Naum Mosque in Jakarta received honorable mentions in 1986. Citra Niaga Urban Development in Samarinda, East Kalimantan, received the award in the fourth cycle of the Award in 1989. In the most recent cycle in 1992, Kampung Kali Code in Yogyakarta was awarded the prize. It is evident that the Indonesian projects that have been awarded are mostly those which have taken into consideration the social needs of particular local communities.
The 1995 Aga Khan Award Master Jury cites the Cengkareng project "for demonstrating that even the most functional of high- tech projects, an airport, can innovatively incorporate landscaping throughout its design, on the air side as well as the land side, thereby challenging all architects to rethink ideas about the links between landscaping and built form."