WAVY ROOF AIRPORT

In 1994, Andy Michalowski and I were tasked with drawing up about four fifths of the new terminal for Harare Airport. The remaining portion was assigned to Mwamuka Mercuri. It's the kind of job where the engineers act as principal agents. We (Clinton & Evans) were subcontracted to BCHOD.

Concept design was by Paul Andreu and ADP (Aeroports de Paris) the same team that had recently completed Changi Airport in Singapore. Wikipedia does not agree with me on this. Perhaps "J. P." (our liaison architect) had worked on Changi with a different architect.

 

  The concept featured a gently undulating roof (the African sky) floating over glass walls and supported by bulging round columns with short steel branches sprouting up to touch the roof (abstracted baobab trees) As an aside we upgraded the RAM on our 386 computers especially for this project. Autocad files as "large" as 2mb were generated. We had to compress them to fit on a floppy disk. How times change.

Anyway, it was never built. An edict came down from the president's office to pay us off and start again. The French were not happy. Frankly I think theirs was a much better design than the one that was eventually built, and the capacity for future expansion was baked in to the concept. But the level of abstraction was not appreciated. The president wanted something much more obviously Zimbabwean (and /or someone with dollar signs in their eyes whispered in their sekuru's ear. Rumours abound in a place like Harare)

 

 
I read online somewhere that Vernon designed the airport. This is not true. A Cyprus-based firm was used for the new scheme. Possibly Mwamuka Mercuri were appointed as local counterparts. I don't remember for sure. Clinton & Evans had no further involvement. The pencil sketch was a last ditch attempt by me to show how the ADP design could be further "Zimbabweanised" A futile gesture.

Coming through the terminal again recently I couldn't help feeling that it's a bit of a hodge-podge, but it functions well enough as far as I can see. Was nepotism a factor? Probably. But I'm sure there are many who are proud of the design with it's obvious reference to Great Zimbabwe.

I include a glimpse of Terminal One at Charles de Gaulle, an example of the clarity of vision that someone like Paul Andreu brings to bear.

I only had a small walk-on part and ultimately was written out of the script, but I witnessed this little drama playing out some thirty years ago.