The Abu Dhabi Executive Council has given the green light for contracts to be awarded for a brand new airport terminal at Abu Dhabi International airport. A statement said the council had approved the “awarding of contracts” for the long-awaited Dh25bn Midfield terminal at Abu Dhabi International Airport, which would accommodate up to 27 million passengers a year.
This basically gives the go ahead for an amazing new terminal at Abu Dhabi and absolutely colossal in size, even though work has already started on it. The Midfield Terminal Complex’s terminal building will be the largest in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, and one of the region’s most architecturally impressive structures. It will be between 630,000 and 702,369sqm in size, and visible from more than 1.5km away. The central space of the terminal building could hold three full-sized football pitches and features a ceiling 52m tall at its highest point.
The complex, designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates who have already worked on Dulles International and Nanning Airport, will include 20,000-25,000sqm of retail and F&B outlets, roughly equivalent to the current size of Marina Mall in Abu Dhabi. These are set around an 8,400sqm indoor park, another first for the region, which will host Mediterranean plants and features at its centre, and desert landscapes at its edge. Associated support buildings take up an additional 800,000sqm, and will include access to 16-20 aircraft parking stands dedicated to cargo.
Whilst work has been going on at the terminal for a few years now, this hopefully will push the completion of the terminal into overdrive as it will make Abu Dhabi a real airport to be reckoned with in the Emirates. In my opinion, this has to be one of the most striking airports in the Middle East and think it’s natural form will be a pleasant change from the ‘bigger, taller, faster’ mentality of a lot of construction in the UAE. On their website they are stating the terminal should be completed in 2016, but on ADAC’s release they are estimating early 2017 which seems a little more realistic. Below is a satellite image of the terminal as in May last year.
TheDesignAir 