Fort McMurray International Airport

from Canadian Architect May 2018

**Fort McMurray Alberta**
Photos: Ema Peter

The new Fort McMurray International Airport Terminal creates a meaningful portal for the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo in the northern reaches of Alberta; a region characterized by its spectacular geography and the natural beauty of the boreal forest, the prairies, and the northern lights. Host to the national oil sands industry, the small community of Fort McMurray has been thrust onto the global stage, stimulating unprecedented growth and cultural diversification.

The remote location coupled with rapid industrial development has severely diluted the availability of skilled building trades and inflated construction costs by 30-to-50 percent. As a result, conventional systems characterize the overwhelming majority of the local built environment, cost-driven to the lowest common denominator of basic steel and concrete structures and doing little for the human spirit. The boom-town ethos prevails, where cheap and fast buildings outnumber long-term quality at every turn.

Built in a remote location, the airport was constructed with significant offsite fabrication, durable materials (including a long-span CLT ceiling) and simple technologies to ensure quality and minimize the construction schedule and future maintenance. The building projects an iconic presence in the landscape and honest expression of its locale.

The new terminal seeks an alternate path, leveraging local constraints into architectural opportunities that celebrate the unique qualities of the place and the spirit of its people.

The architecture is purposefully succinct; material resources are used sparingly while also capitalizing on the qualitative advantages of off-site production and fabrication. The resultant building form relates to its green-field setting, respecting the language of the prairie landscape while simultaneously generating an iconic presence. A collection of robust volumes is deployed to express discrete programmatic functions, arranged to facilitate future expansion of the 15,000-square-metre facility. The low, linear, three-storey profile establishes itself with a sense of permanence, inspired by the durability of the native ecology and industry. Raw natural materials are used throughout, including weathering steel, bitumen-hued metal cladding, and exposed concrete. Inside, warm, wood framed spaces that provide direct physical and visual access

to a landscaped courtyard greet the passengers. The interior spaces feature abundant natural light and views celebrating the sun, sky and horizon help to orient passengers in transition. A sculptural screen wall above the arrivals hall, composed of illuminated white steel fins, subtly evokes the northern lights and the aspen stands of the boreal forest.

Several innovations challenge the status quo, including passive solar orientation, super-insulated building envelope assemblies, in-floor radiant heating, displacement ventilation, and sophisticated heat recovery systems. Low-emitting materials are used throughout to promote healthy interior environments for passengers and employees. More significantly, the building is also distinguished by its early adoption and creative application of a mass timber construction system that envelopes the principal public spaces. Its use as an expressive and didactic design element contributes to community identity. It also confirms that mass timber construction systems can compete economically with the steel-and-concrete solutions that currently dominate the building industry Canada-wide. The environmental benefits of renewable wood-based solutions are well-known. They include significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, reduced carbon footprint, superior thermal performance, and reductions in energy use. Validating and completing a large-scale mass timber solution in one of the country’s most challenging regions has broad and meaningful implications for construction, relevant to regions across Canada.

**ABOVE The ambitious project comprises a new green-field airport for the region, complete with a new terminal building, aircraft apron, taxiways, approach road, and parking areas.**

:: Jury :: The airport typology is a process-heavy programme that often subjugates the architecture, but this project harnesses those very processes to create the architecture. The design successfully addresses almost every element of the programme, from the graphically superior wayfinding, to the discreetly embedded garbage and recycling bins, to the passenger areas carefully organized to create a sense of calm and comfort. Wood is used at different levels and approaches: the long-span CLT panels on the ceiling are a warm and practical structural element. The more fine-grained wood wall surfaces on the ground floor provide an elegant, meditative backdrop for the fraught process of travel. The upper-level roadway breaks up the massing of the overall building in an elegant way and offers clerestory lighting. From structural logic to passenger convenience to an overall sense of warmth and beauty, this is an airport that works beautifully at every level.

This article is from:

Canadian Architect May 2018