Big SFO redesign gets off the ground
Teamwork rules on low-disruption $1.5 billion project
The Bay Area’s busiest gathering of designers right now might be tucked inside a hangar on the outskirts of San Francisco International Airport.
That’s where 200 or so architects, engineers and other kindred spirits gather each weekday to chew on the details of a $1.5 billion project that won’t be finished until the end of 2022. And the first tangible result of their efforts — to rebuild an entire terminal without ever closing it — is the room where
they work each day, a 33,000-square-foot, freestanding structure that was conceived and constructed in less than nine months.
“We whaled on this project,” said Steve Weindel, an architect principal at Gensler, one of more than a dozen design-related firms sharing space in the “big room” within the hangar. “It got the creative energies going.”
The 16-foot-high cube, with its gypsum-board walls, is of note not only for curiosity’s sake, but also for what it says about the nature of design collaboration in today’s world.
Most of the workers sit at desks and stare at computers, like anywhere else. The ever-changing mix of material samples — from carpeting to ceiling tiles — is displayed on a long board resting on a pair of jersey barriers.
The entire structure will be dismantled when design work comes to an end. But it required soundproofing thick enough to muffle the din from jets touching down or taking off. It also needed to be strong enough to withstand a major earthquake — and to deflect anything that might fall from the hangar’s structure during a temblor.
The designers sit in open “neighborhoods,” arranged around a central “work lounge” inspired by co-working spaces. Not everything is exposed, though. There’s a “zen room” for yoga sessions. A smaller room, dimly lit, allows breastfeeding mothers to retreat from the din.
Though the impromptu space has a proudly DIY feel, it is a command post of sorts for the biggest overhaul to SFO since the International Terminal opened in 2000.
The southernmost piece in the facility, Terminal 1, is being torn down in stages and rebuilt. The number of gates will increase from 19 to 24. Common areas will be upgraded to meet the comfort levels of SFO’s other terminals.
The makeover is so big and complex that construction will take place in four stages (the first, dismantling portions of the existing terminal from 1961, began quietly in October). Airport officials also chopped the project into two roughly equal pieces: the front of the terminal, which holds airline counters and the security checkpoints, and the long concourse with boarding gates behind.
They will move forward in tandem, each phased so that at least nine gates are always open — and so passengers can reach those gates safely.
Splitting the effort in half makes sense logistically. It also shares the wealth, as it were, ensuring that a wider variety of firms are represented, from structural engineers to signage consultants.
“The airport is very sensitive to wanting to support the architectural community in San Francisco,” said Farrah Young, SFO’s design manager for the project. “Something this big, the more people working on it the better.”
Yet Terminal 1 needs to feel like a single entity rather than two projects, one in front and onein back. At the very least, passengers can’t be allowed to pass through security and then plunge onto the tarmac.
Hence the “big room,” predicated on the notion that in an age of videoconferencing and shared documents in the cloud, physical proximity is still a virtue. There’s even a Thursday morning session around the long table with its material samples, so members of each firm can say what they’ve been up to the prior week.
“The room really emphasizes what’s going on,” Weindel said. “That was one of the main reasons to do it — to have the two teams together on a day-to-day basis, because for patrons it’s a continuous experience.”
As for what the experience should be, SFO has a deserved reputation for making its share of the travel experience relatively hassle-free. The goal at Terminal 1 is to raise the bar, like SFO did with the rebirth of Terminal 2 in 2011.
For instance, designers seek to make zones as prosaic as baggage claim seem cool, or at least a place where you don’t mind cooling your heels.
“Many cities think of airports as their front door, yet the big experience is when you’re leaving, and that can be pretty grim,” said Byron Kuth of Kuth Ranieri Architects, which is working with Gensler on the terminal’s front half, part of a team led by general contractor Hensel Phelps. “We want to introduce a different paradigm, a finer grain that’s more intimate and personalized.”
Kuth Ranieri is a 15-member firm with offices in North Beach. Now, six of those employees are based in the hangar full-time.
“This space isn’t anyone’s turf,” Kuth said approvingly. “When you need to work something out with a designer from another part of the project, you just find a corner and pin stuff up madly. It’s the architecture of getting things done.”
“Something this big, the more people working on it the better.” Farrah Young, SFO design manager for the project