May 23, 2007

Europe | England | London

The Terminal

By Tiffany Hawk

From Richard Rogers to Gordon Ramsay, Britain’s sharpest creative minds team up to transform Heathrow.

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By next March, Heathrow won’t simply be the world’s busiest international airport; it may well be the most spectacular. Designed by starchitect Richard Rogers (think: Paris’s Pompidou Centre and Madrid’s new Barajas Airport, pictured), the new $8.5 billion Terminal 5 aims to entirely transform the Third-World experience of the present Heathrow. For one thing, that means less bag-losing (Heathrow is a specialist — last year, it managed to separate 7,000 passengers from their bags in one weekend). It also means an end to modern airport queuing as we know it. Seriously. Passengers who haven’t already checked in online will be welcomed by 96 self-service kiosks before dropping their bags in a chute (no clogging conveyor belts), which delivers luggage to any prescribed plane.

And you won’t have to slum it under low ceilings anymore. Housed under 10 vast steel trees sheathed in glass, the dreamscape structure will be a temple to conspicuous consumption: 144 retail stores and restaurants will include outposts by Brit trendsetters Paul Smith, Ted Baker, as well as Gordon Ramsay’s first airport restaurant. Although T5 will be exclusively served by British Airways, other carriers are also looking to luxuriate in new designer digs. Come December, Terminal 3 will have a new glass forecourt courtesy of Norman Foster — who’s also creating Heathrow East on the site of the soon-to-be demolished Terminals 1 and 2. For now, though, he’s busy completing another sharp-edged terminal for another Olympics city: Beijing.