Hawkins\Brown 

The big UK airport debate rages on and this week, three designs have been released from top UK practices reimagining the Heathrow Airport site as a mixed-use development, buzzing with local residences and business models. Mayor of London Boris Johnson has backed plans to redevelop the site to meet London’s need for jobs and permanent homes, and is in favour of constructing a new hub airport in the Inner Thames Estuary.

The following are excerpts from the three latest proposals for the Heathrow Airport site from Hawkins\Brown, Maccreanor Lavington Architects and Rick Mather Architects. Click here to read the full project proposals.

Hawkins\Brown 

Hawkins\Brown - Romance Of The Sky

Heathrow City should be a massive platform for innovation - London’s petri dish - where new ideas can be incubated in the fields of technology, industry and governance. Three big ideas are proposed - the UK’s first airship port, a factory for homes and a green belt in the green belt.

Airship Port: This proposal would see a consolidation of the existing infrastructure into a new generation of service for freighting specialised goods and even for tourism and business travel.

Maccreanor Lavington 

Maccreanor Lavington Architects - Livable City

Central to the successful delivery will be the development of a flexible framework whose vision is de-coupled from a specific timeframe; the ability to flex delivery in response to opportunities, accelerate and decelerate delivery as necessary proving to be its success.

Maccreanor Lavington 

Existing buildings are used as seeds and nodes to establish fresh development and certain existing and historic features are used to ignite ecological and cultural diversity to create a liveable landscape. The former terminal 2 building will be renovated to become a civic centre and retail hub. It will form the heart of the new community at Heathrow Central, sparking urban development.

Rick Mather Architects 

Rick Mather Architects - The Transforming City 

Through working with the existing structure and by seeing the terminals as generators to development, the site can be sequentially and naturally transformed. It will be a model for a city embedded in its setting and wider landscape; singular and collective, tuned for local, regional, national and international opportunity, and composed of distinctive areas, a main centre, with a wide range of building types, held together as a whole.

Rick Mather Architects 

The former runways define the structure of the city, connecting the various elements together while at the same time acting as orientation devices to define the different neighbourhoods. Each of the ten distinct character areas are connected by these linear runway parks. Each local centre provides a traditional cluster of retail, education and community uses focused around the transport connection and retained airport buildings....Continue Reading

> via worldarchitecturenews.com