Terminal Two Train Station,
Flughafen Köln/Bonn - Airport Cologne
Bonn, Germany
Murphy/Jahn

A sleek, gleaming terminal adds to an airport that is striving to attract passengers for both air and rail transit

By Jan Otakar Fischer

© H.G. Essch Fotographie

For more photos click on 'photos & drawings' above. To see the people and products behind this project click on 'people & products.'

Murphy/Jahn’s design calls for a set of new additions to be completed in several phases. Terminal Two, positioned closely alongside the existing Terminal One, was finished in summer 2002, along with two large parking structures. An elevated roadway, extending and altering the old traffic loop, was built to serve both terminals and the garages opposite. An underground high-speed rail station at the heart of the complex is currently under construction, and renovations to Terminal One are under way.

Terminal Two is the signature building in the ensemble, countering the massiveness of Terminal One’s concrete with an entirely different tectonic of steel and glass. The desire for openness and transparency is manifest in a 70-foot-high curtain wall that wraps the building’s perimeter, right up to the jagged edge of the complex, folded roof plate. Terminal Two can be understood as a simple glass shed, but also as a laterally expandable bar, 985 feet long and 246 feet deep, built with prefabricated, modular parts. The physical connection between the two terminals, with such disparate structural systems, is smartly limited to a two-level glass-and-steel bridge.

When passengers emerge from airplanes into the arrival hall, their choices of exit by bus, car, taxi, or train are immediately and clearly available. Escalators and glass elevators transport travelers down to the railway station, up to an array of travel agencies on a narrow mezzanine, or up another level to the main concourse, where departures are processed. On this uppermost level, a now-familiar sequence of transitions is defined—check-in, shopping, security, waiting—beneath a vast, skylit ceiling.

Helmut Jahn and Werner Sobeck, the Stuttgart-based engineer who has worked with Jahn for nearly 10 years, coined the term "Archi-Neering" to define what they do in projects like this one, where form and technical prowess are thoroughly enmeshed. Sobeck designed the terminal’s glass curtain wall, as well as the rail station’s glass roof and the cladding on the parking garages. Arup and Partners and IGH collaborated with Jahn on the roof, whose steel "trees" march along a 99-by-99-foot module. Skylights pierce the north side of each roof fold.

More than 10,000 parking spaces were added to the airport. The six-level exposed-steel decks of the garages are punctured by light courts and clad in stainless-steel-mesh panels or ivy trellises. A twin garage is planned on the south side of the loop.

See the August 2003 issue of Architectural Record for full coverage of this project.

Formal name of Project:
Terminal Two Train Station, Flughafen Köln/Bonn - Airport Cologne

Location:
Bonn, Germany

Gross square footage:
70,000 m2

Owner:
Flughafen Köln/Bonn GmbH

Architect:
Murphy/Jahn
35 East Wacker Drive
Chicago, IL 60601
PH: 312 427-7300
FX: 312 332-0274
www.murphyjahn.com