A Typomorphological Analysis of Airport Terminals

摘要

The airport terminal is one of the major new types of architecture conceived and developed in the last century. The design of terminal buildings, being conditioned by the efficient integration of evolving mass transportation modes with novel building technologies, significant regional economical considerations and effective responses to human factors, can generate a unique, complex and dynamic built environment. The evolution of this architectural type depends on a rigorous understanding of its architectural morphology: the ways in which the integration of building components shapes the architectural space and places of the terminal and transforms, in the eyes of individuals and communities, its tectonic entities into memorable forms. The current paper introduces a revised classification of morphological attributes intended to expand our ability to conduct a descriptive and normative analysis of the morphology of this architectural type.