Mexico announces new airport design
$9.2 billion facility will take 50 years to complete
MEXICO – British architect Norman Foster and Mexico’s Fernando Romero have had their design chosen for Mexico City’s new $9.2-billion airport, which is expected to quadruple the current airport’s capacity to 120 million passengers per year, authorities announced Wednesday.
Communications and Transportation Department Secretary Gerardo Ruiz said both architects were picked by a committee on Tuesday.
Foster is among the world’s leading architects and designed the Beijing Terminal 3 airport. Romero is the son-in-law of Mexican telecom magnate Carlos Slim.
The new Mexico City airport will cover nearly 11,400 acres of former lakebed adjacent to the present, over-crowded facility. It will have six runways and is expected to be completed in 50 years. The current airport, which can handle only 32 million passengers per year, eventually will be turned over to the city for recreational and educational use.
The project will require an investment of $9.16 billion, Ruiz said.
President Enrique Pena Nieto said three runaways are expected to be up and running by 2020 and handle 50 million passengers per year.
“The new airport will be a grand work, a symbol of modern Mexico,” Pena Nieto said.
The airy, lightweight, membrane-roofed terminal is designed in the form of a giant “X.”
Mexican officials said they hope the new airport becomes the main air hub in Latin America.
Foster, who has received some of the world’s top architecture awards, said the airport will have spacious halls that can be used for art exhibitions.
Romero, who designed Carlos Slim’s Soumaya museum and is the billionaire’s son-in-law, said the airport will honor the Mexican flag’s coat of arms, which has an eagle on top of a cactus that is devouring a snake and is a reference to Tenochtitlan, the pre-Columbian city on which the capital is built. The entrance to the terminal will have a garden of cacti and other elements to symbolize the snake and the eagle’s wings.
The airport proposed by Pena Nieto’s administration will be built on federal land.