Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, International Terminal, San Francisco International Airport

At the time San Francisco International Airport opened

as Mills Field Municipal Airport of San Francisco in

1927, most of the San Francisco Peninsula was pastureland.

Over the years, new terminals and hangars

were built to satisfy the demand of increased air traffic.

Beginning with a small administration building of

residential character including horizontal wood siding

and red cedar shingles, the airport advanced to the

larger San Francisco Airport Administration Building.

After continuous growth, in 2000 the airport was reorganized

and expanded into the vast, structurally iconic

new International Terminal.

The new building acts as a gateway between land

and air, offering a recognizable image to arriving and

leaving passengers. It is organized over five levels,

making it America's first mid-rise terminal. It receives

multiple modes of transportation - linking cars, busses,

the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system and

the internal light-rail system.

According to Craig Hartman, design architect with

SOM, the terminal is 'founded upon the qualities of

light and lightness'. He says of the new roof: 'We

conceived of it as a floating, sheltering plane and as

a symbol.' The building's position above several lanes

of traffic required a 380-foot long span between the

central columns - essentially the building is a bridge.

Thus the building itself is in a state of lift-off, offering

the first step into the air for departure or a transition

space for arrival before the traveler really gets back to

the ground. The terminal is built on friction-pendulum

base insulators that allow it to swing in the event of

an earthquake. The roof trusses' shape evokes many

possible associations, the rolling Bay Area hills, the

wings of airplanes, a bird in flight - all images not unusual

inspirations for airport designs, though in this

case especially elegantly achieved.

Anne-Catrin Schultz studied architecture in Stuttgart

and Florence, and earned a Ph. D. in architecture

theory at the University of Stuttgart. Following postdoctoral

research at the MIT, she relocated to the San

Francisco Bay Area and worked for several years with

Turnbull Griffin Haesloop and Skidmore Owings &

Merrill. She has taught at the University of California

in Berkeley and is currently teaching at the California

College of the Arts and at the City College of San

Francisco. Timothy Joseph Hursley is an architectural

photographer living in Little Rock, Arkansas, whose

works have been featured in architectural journals

and museums around the world. At age sixteen, while

still attending Brother Rice High School in Bloomfield,

Michigan, he became a photographic assistant and

apprentice of Balthazar Korab, a pioneer in modern

architectural photography.