Eye-catching new tower at airport is cleared to go
Sculpted design will have energy-saving benefits
Florence Loyie
Edmonton Journal
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Prairie wheat fields and snowdrifts were the inspiration behind the design for a new office and control tower going up at the Edmonton International Airport as part of its $1-billion expansion.
The airport is the first and last thing many visitors see as they come and go from Edmonton, and airport authority officials wanted an iconic tower that was symbolic of the region, said design architect Stephen Boyd with Cohos Evamy integratedesign.
"They wanted to make sure it didn't look like a tower that had landed here from Toronto or Vancouver. They wanted it to be about Edmonton and the Alberta region."
The design team canvassed colleagues, friends and family on what they thought was unique and significant about the Edmonton region. They heard stories about the seasons, and how the landscape looks with wheat fields and grass undulating in the summer breezes and snowdrifts carved into layered ribbons by the frigid prairie wind.
Another requirement for the new tower was that it be designed in keeping with its green construction goals, including open-concept floors to maximize natural light and reduce the need for electrical lighting, and reduce window-to-wall ratios for better energy efficiency.
Metallic waves on the outside walls are not only an esthetic feature, but reduce energy consumption through "passive shading," Boyd said.
"Sustainability was a huge part of the tower's design."
"This is a tower that sits out in the middle of the prairie overlooking the runways. It is not an urban setting, where there are a lot of buildings clustered around it. There is really nothing to stop the sun from beating down on it or the winds from hitting it. The biggest thing we did was, we turned the tower in a configuration that is east-west as opposed to north-south."
The southern and western faces of the building have deeper overhangs for better energy efficiency. In the summer, when the sun is at a higher angle, the southern overhangs block the sunlight, keeping the building cooler. In the winter, when the sun's angle is lower, the western overhangs allow the sun's rays to provide added warmth.
"We actually tracked the wind and the sun angles to make sure the building was sculpted in the most correct way, to act as passive solar shading and actually minimize our heat loss," Boyd said.
"It's all about dealing with the sun angles when you have a building at this latitude."
Boyd said he thinks the new building is unique, in that there is not another airport in North America where the control tower is incorporated with an office building. Usually air traffic control towers are stand-alone buildings.
"What we had to be very cognizant of with the new control tower was viewing angles, because you have to be able to see the aircraft below the tower, as well as those out on the runways and taxiways," he said.
Work on the combined office and control tower begins next month and the building will open in phases. New retail and food outlets will be on the lower levels with administration offices in the middle. The top two floors will house the NAV Canada air traffic control facilities.
The retail portion of the new building is scheduled to open in late 2011, with the office and control tower opening in the summer of 2012.
When completed, the new building will add about 10,000 square metres of new space at the airport. The new control tower will replace one built in the 1960s.
© The Edmonton Journal 2009
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