Essay Sample about Architecture: Kansai International Airport

The documentary, The Miraculous Floating Airport, produced by Spark Documentaries describes the engineering marvel of Kansai International Airport. In the late twentieth century, the Kansai region was determined to build a new airport. This was important because the local Osaka airport was unsafely located in a densely populated area. There was little empty land in the city so the government decided to attempt to build on nearby farmland in Narita. Farmers and other locals protested this, delaying construction for nearly ten years. Then, the idea to build an airport in the middle of the bay was suggested. Fishermen opposed the construction as it would change the movement of fish making fishing difficult. The government offered money to fishermen for disturbing the fish routes and decided to build the airport on a man made island in the bay. 

Osaka Bay is located in extremely geologically treacherous waters. In the region, there have been nine major earthquakes of magnitude seven. The Bay is also located in the path of frequent typhoons. Engineers took these factors into consideration when creating the island of which the airport would sit upon. They proposed an island 2.5 miles long and 4000 feet wide made of landfill. The seabed would be 100 metres of soft clay, both diluvial and alluvial. They predicted that the land would sink 19 feet and would settle into the seabed. 

In January of 1987 the construction of the island began. They started by creating a sea wall of large stones to keep the seabed from floating away. The large rocks in the sea wall also would help to dissipate waves. They then strengthened the seabed with layers of sand. They then began filling the landfill, which was made of three types of coarse rock. The quarry which supplied the landfill was bombed and equipment was destroyed, setting construction back for months. But in the Fall of the same year the first bridge from Kansai’s island to the mainland began construction. The bridge contained an upper deck highway and a lower deck railroad and was made with flexible joints to allow the bridge to bend and not break in a typhoon. By 1990 the bridge was complete, but engineers observed that the island was sinking at a larger rate than expected. They predicted the island would sink 19 feet, but by March the island had sunk 27 feet and was sinking at a rate of 2 inches per month. To keep the island above sea level, they added an additional 11.5 feet of soil onto the island. 

Workers then began constructing the runways. They opted to pave the runways with asphalt: it would absorb the earth's movement better than concrete which would prevent it from easily breaking as the island faced undulation.

Architects Noriyuki Okabe and Renzo Piano were commissioned to design the airport. They 

struggled with Kansai: the airport had to be small enough to fit on the island, big enough to accommodate all the functions of a modern airport, high enough to be a beautiful tourist attraction and low enough to allow for an unobstructed view from the watchtower. The architects looked to nature, and created a toroid shaped design for the terminal. They designed an arch-like structure which looked like half of the circle was on land and the other half was in the water. This design was completed in spring of 1990. 

Concerns arose as they determined that the terminal would weigh half that of the island and therefore would not sink with the land. To keep the terminal attached to the land and prevent it from cracking, they placed a ballast of iron ore which weighed a quarter of a million tonnes on the bottom of the terminal. They then spent three years constructing the terminal. They used steel trusses to support the roof, glass with rubber frames to allow for bending and covered the roof with stainless steel panels designed to resist seismic shaking. 

By 1993 the terminal was complete: it contained a large open concept entrance area: allowing passengers to see the whole airport, and had arrivals and departures vertically stacked with escalators for access and used automated trains to move passengers from the terminals to the exit of the airport. To air condition the terminal they created a jet shape in the ceiling which would circulate air through the mine long building. The island continued to sink so to keep the terminal in the proper position each of the nine hundred columns used to support the terminal contained a sensor which would alert the computers in the control room as they subsided. When the computers are alerted, workers raise or lower the columns using hydraulic jacks to keep the supports level. Once everything was prepared and safe, the airport opened in September 1994. 

The airport's design was put to test twice in the next five years. In January 1995 a 7.2 magnitude earthquake occurred, the epicenter only 18 miles from Kansai airport. This earthquake devastated nearby city Kobe, but Kansai faced minor damage: cracked sidewalks. The airport was able to open shortly after the earthquake, allowing for rescue teams to enter. The next test of Kansai airport’s strength was in September 1998, when a typhoon approached the Japanese coast. Kansai closed to reduce vehicle traffic over the bridge but was able to reopen a few hours later. The typhoon damaged some of the terminal's roof but otherwise Kansai was unscathed. 

The future of Kansai is exciting and worrying. The island is only 17 feet above sea level and sinks a foot more annually. Engineers are worried that a typhoon's wave would be able to flood the airport. To remedy this they must build a higher sea wall. But, with the great success of Kansai thus far, they are hoping to build a second island to allow for a second runway.

This documentary highlights the intense process which occurred when building the Kansai International Airport as well as the deep geological considerations necessary to ensure it would be safe.