a. conway pedron + rebecca bartlett: symbiotic vaulting for libreville airport in gabon

aerial rendering of Libreville Airport proposal

currently attending harvard university’s graduate school of design, america-based a. conway pedron and rebecca bartlett propose to re-imagine the airport in libreville, gabon. from the project’s inception, issues of tooling, primarily utilizing parametric tools are set at odds against site research and architectural and landscape sensibilities as it confronts growth in the city and development within the surrounding national parks, presenting the “park-city-boundary” problem as a primary issue.

inherent in the parameters of airport functionality is the need to eliminate all traces of landscape ecology. sites must be absolutely flat, devoid of standing water, and lacking vegetation, which can attract unwanted wildlife. not only do airports require a lack of eco-systems, spatially they require extremely expansive horizontal space, displacing large amounts of both natural environment and urban program when sited close to a city.

rendering of pollution mediating landscape

an exploration in the expansion of the libreville airport allows for the site to remain in proximity to the city without sacrificing the  biologically thriving area that would potentially give richness to the project. by using landscape mediation techniques applied to the standard architectural object of the vault, the destructive characteristics of an airfield, such as runoff and pollution, are mediated.  this also provides an aesthetic, and rather uncharacteristically organic, appearance to tourists arriving in the airport. 

  rendering of bio-jungle and vine growth lattice

in response to the desire to negotiate ordered commonalities in difficult or varied landscapes and topographic conditions,  a system of catenary arches were created to provide a framework for idiosyncratic programmatic conditions on specific terrain.  these situation can prove to be exceptional at providing useful case studies for this tool in that they require planar conditions,  volumetric subdivisions and structural supports that work within a variegated and volatile ecosystem existing within gabon.

axonometric of master plan

section of bio-jungle and vine growth lattice

pollution mediation through natural filtration

axon of typical vault condition

section of typical vault condition

rendering of vaults projecting into water