Zoo Animals Show Sounders Spirit
Cranberry Saw Us
Seattlest Pix 09Nov06
Can't Miss It, Weekend Edition: Nov 6-8
Fall Flashback
After a year and a half of construction work, Sea-Tac International Airport recently completed construction on their new Central Terminal. This past Saturday was a one-day-only public open house to show off the newly finished terminal, so Seattlest hopped a bus and wandered our way down to see the sights.
And quite the sight it was, too! While the entire terminal looks to be quite nice and a very welcome spot to wait while traveling, it's the Curtainwall Window that is the well-deserved centerpiece of the terminal. At 60 feet high by a whopping 350 feet wide, this is the largest window wall of its kind in North America, according to architectural firm Fentress Bradburn. Consisting of 452 individual panes of glass (400 pounds each), 5,800 feet (1.1 miles) of cabling, and able to flex up to five inches in any direction to withstand both high winds and earthquakes up to magnitude 8, the window offers a spectacular view of the airfield backed by the Olympic Mountains in the distance.
Designed to allow passengers to once again watch arriving and departing flights as they wait -- something that hasn't been possible since the original airport's observation decks were closed in 1962 -- the window does an incredible job of opening the terminal's space, giving it a far lighter, airy, and comfortable feel than airports generally have.
Also worth noting is the suspended sculpture “Landing,” by Ralph Hemlick and Stuart Schechter. Consisting of over 2,800 pewter pieces suspended from 1,050 wires, it depicts a goose landing on water, with a three-dimensional reflection underneath. The landing goose is formed by many small birds, with its reflection created by fish. As an added bonus for those who take the time to look, mixed in throughout the piece are more than fifty different Northwest themed pieces, including umbrellas, the Pike Place Pig, and SAM's Hammering Man.
Thankfully, as nice as art and architecture are, the redesigned Central Terminal also acts as a much simpler, consolidated point of entry for travelers. Instead of having to wander the length of the airport, searching a maze of corridors to find the right gate or security checkpoint, all roads now lead to the Central Terminal. There is a single security checkpoint between the public area and the passengers-only terminal, with ten checkpoint lanes that can be expanded to sixteen during heavy travel periods. Once through the checkpoint, four hallways lead away from the Central Terminal to each of the four concourses. Having spent far too much time in far too many airports trying to get from one flight to another -- a process which all too often seems to entail multiple security checkpoints -- Seattlest can only be thrilled with the new setup at Sea-Tac.
With the completion of the Central Terminal, three of the four major expansion and renovation efforts at Sea-Tac are now complete: the Satellite Transit System finished two years ahead of schedule and $2 million under budget; the South Terminal/Concourse A was completed last year; the Central Terminal is now open; and the Third Runway is on track to come online in 2008.
Seattlest may not be convinced that there's any good reason to leave our fair city -- but at least we can rest assured that we've got a welcoming airport to assist us in our travels when necessary.
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I was just there today--it's lovely. The nicest part (to me) is that you're in this huge, airy, cavernous space, but it isn't terribly loud. Usually those spots are echo chambers.