The expansion of the second terminal will be commissioned at the end of the year, although the coronavirus has hit the canvas of air travel.
Wind at Helsinki-Vantaa Airport in front of the new main door of the second terminal. The hardened builders pass in and out of the door, which opens to passengers at the turn of the year.
In the shadow of climate change and the interest rate pandemic, the owner of the airport, the state-owned Finavia, has persistently implemented its extensive investment program.
Five hundred employees will build interiors in the approximately 40,000-square-foot extension. The interior of the building will have two floors of the departure and arrival halls of the second terminal.
In front of the main door there are good views in different directions towards the air traffic control tower in the south and a new shiny 1,800-car parking garage.
Opposite is the new entrance to the Ring Road train station, called the Pavilion.
From the north corner of the terminal, you can peek down to street level, where there is not yet a hint of the new bus station. The area has been dedicated to the site until the end of the year.
The new lobby building at Helsinki-Vantaa’s second terminal is 40,000 square meters.
Massive the contract has progressed on schedule and budget. The contraction of air traffic has reduced land traffic to Helsinki-Vantaa, and therefore some special transports have arrived even more smoothly than under normal conditions.
No corona infection has been detected at the second terminal site.
“2-3 corona infections have been detected at the expansion site in the northern gate area,” adds Finavia’s Technical Director Henri Hansson.
The construction and renovation contract for the second terminal, worth approximately EUR 400 million, will be carried out by the construction company SRV. The northern gate area is being expanded by the construction company YIT.
Air passengers pass under an impressive outdoor ticket for check-in.
The installation of the wooden elements of the outer flag is about to begin.
What kind through the lobby building will air passengers then pass in ten months?
Ala Architects has designed an impressive exterior flag for the building, which continues in the ceiling of the departure hall as a wavy wooden structure. Even if you didn’t know in advance that the same office had designed the Oodi library, the impressive wood upholstery would give a good hint.
Wood cladding is a Finnish cross-glued spruce, which requires installers to work precisely. Since October, Raisio Carpenters’ six-member installation team has attached wooden elements to the ceiling so that three-quarters of the ceiling is already in place.
Elements the size of a small studio have been built in Raisio for more than a year. They have been transferred to the airport via a fairly detour because the bridges on the Turku motorway are too low for them. Special transports have circled the old Turuntie road to Lohja and from there via Hyvinkää to the airport.
Raisio employees have had to think about safe installation methods very carefully, because the largest parts of the interior weigh 800 kilograms and the elements of the outer flag up to 1,500 kilograms.
“There are no two similar parts. Now there is a tough conclusion going on, ”says the CEO Jarmo Yrjölä.
Departure hall In addition to roofing, floor installations are also made of Finnish granite. Furniture installations are about to begin that soon. A sample copy of the new check-in desk has already arrived for test use.
In the middle stages of the departure hall, the light opening downstairs is still covered with tarpaulins. Above it, a skylight looms over the roof of the building, still covered in snow.
Finavia’s project manager Tuomo Lindstedt calls the light holes even salmon-shaped, but the architect Juho Grönholm prefers geometric terms.
“The light opening in the floor of the departure hall is diamond-shaped to be as large as possible but not in the way of passenger flows.”
The columns in the departure hall are also diamond-shaped in diameter, making them look slimmer in certain directions than they actually are.
Air passengers arriving in Helsinki are greeted by four gemstones, which are still hiding behind racks and bubble wrap.
Downstairs Ilona for air passengers arriving at Helsinki-Vantaa is a credit to be built under the light opening. At this stage, it is still modest in appearance, as the 20-ton transfer rock boulders chartered to the site with great effort are protected with bubble wrap.
In Grönholm’s eyes, there are plenty of plants around the stones and moss treated as perennials on top of the stones.
“The ice age, with unknown force, transported boulders far from their original locations. This is also the case for air passengers who arrive in Finland from long distances, ”he describes.
Grönholm selected suitable-looking boulders based on the contractor’s photographs and was involved in arranging the stones for their current locations.
He characterizes the extension of the terminal building as a fun project that has tried to restore early adventure and romance to air travel. However, in the current years of climate change, his ideas on air transport are contradictory.
“Admittedly, climate change can hardly be stopped by planning ugly airports.”
Incoming the passenger lobby will also become one of the busiest travel centers in Finland. Taxis are waiting for passengers on the east side of the hall, buses on the west side. From the main doors at street level there is a direct access to the Ring Road station.
A grant has been received from the European Union for the design and implementation of the travel center.
A new connection of a couple of hundred meters to the Ring Road station has been excavated underground. The connecting tunnel extends to the intermediate platform, from where escalators lead to the platform level.
Finavia’s Henri Hansson calculates that when the transport connection opens, train passengers will arrive at the new Pavilion in a couple of minutes. Three escalators will be installed in parallel, and there will be four elevators. The pavilion building was designed by HKP Architects.
Next to the new entrance building of the terminal, a blue building has also been erected for security screening facilities. Something about the scale of the project says that this blue box is almost as big as the Ode.
The distance from the Ring Road station to the second terminal will be shortened when the new tunnel connection with the escalator is completed.
In the following during the work phase, the old departure hall of the second terminal will be renovated and integrated into the Schengen gate area. During the renovation work, passengers will be led through the contract area.
The area to be renovated is almost the same size as the new building, 35,000 square meters. All work phases are scheduled to be completed in 2023.
For lovers of the airport’s more than 50-year-old patchwork parquet floor, the renovation brings bad news. The floor has been sanded and varnished so many times that there is little tread left.
Already in previous renovations, the original parquet area had shrunk from 21,000 square meters to 5,000, and there is little left after this renovation.
Ventilation, electrical work, granite floor and ceiling installations are carried out simultaneously in the entrance hall.
Jobs the second terminal armpit began in early 2019 and has been continued without interruption. Finavia’s Hansson believes that air travel will rise out of the interest rate pit when the restrictions are lifted.
“Business travel is likely to be reduced by the increase in teleworking. However, it is assumed that commuting flights will return to pre-epidemic levels in the next few years, as the growth pressures for air travel have not disappeared. People need to see each other, even if they are used to remote meetings. ”
Finavia’s EUR 1 billion investment program began in a situation where passenger numbers at Helsinki-Vantaa grew by more than 10 per cent annually. In January, there were 92 percent fewer passengers than a year ago.
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source https://pledgetimes.com/air-transport-this-is-the-huge-new-part-of-helsinki-vantaa-climate-change-can-hardly-be-stopped-by-planning-ugly-airports/
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