Week 3: Twa Terminal Building, 1962

Designer: Eero Saarinen
Location: JFK Airport, New York, USA
Function: Airport Terminal Building



The original terminal for Trans World Airlines. Portions of the original complex have been demolished, and the Saarinen terminal (or head house) has been renovated, partially encircled by and serving as a ceremonial entrance to a new adjacent terminal completed in 2008. Together, the old and new buildings comprise JetBlue Airways JFK operations and are known collectively as Terminal 5 or simply T5.

The City of New York designated both the interiors and the exteriors of the Saarinen terminal a historic landmark in 1994 and in 2005 the National Park Service listed the Trans World Flight Center on the National Register of Historic Places.

While noted architect Robert A.M.Stern called the evocative Saarinen-designed TWA Flight Center "Grand Central of the jet age", the pragmatic new encircling terminal has been called "hyper-efficient" and a "monument to human throughput".

While Jet Blue built a new terminal behind the old TWA base, no one could use it because it was unwieldly for todays security screening. The Port Authority spent $20 million in removing the asbestos inside it in hopes of renting it out, to no takers.

Now it is believed the terminal will become the lobby of an airport hotel with 150 rooms, and the PA is looking for investors to build a hotel between the old TWA terminal and the new JetBlue base.

While the site may seem like an advantageous place to build a hotel, the owners will have to pass FAA inspections and follow the building's resistry as a historic site. Still, with shopping and dining options planned for the old TWA terminal, the site could draw a considerable amount of traffic to one of the worlds most iconic buildings.

The building took form of a huge bird with wings spread in flight.

Sources from:
http://www.theloweroad.com/the-lowe-road-inflight-magazin/2011/2/8/twa-terminal-to-take-off-into-a-boutique-hotel.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_Flight_Center
http://www.cambridge2000.com/gallery/html/P73127487e.html
http://en.structurae.de/structures/data/index.cfm?id=s0000428