"Madrid's New Airport Terminal Wins Prize"

Monday, October 16, 2006

Madrid's New Airport Terminal Wins Prize
The Associated Press


LONDON, United Kingdom (AP) -- Madrid's new Barajas International Airport
terminal, featuring vast, light-filled halls, has been honored with the
Royal Institute of British Architects Stirling Prize - Britain's most
prestigious architecture award.

The building's designer, the Richard Rogers Partnership, beat five other
challengers with its colorful airport terminal, three-quarters of a mile
long.

Richard Rogers, chief architect behind the project, accepted the $35,400
prize for the firm, which also designed London's Millennium Dome and the
Centre Pompidou in Paris.

"It's certainly the most exciting building I have been involved with for
many decades," Rogers said Saturday at the London ceremony.

The airport terminal, which took six years to complete, came at a final cost
of $7.2 billion and doubled the size of the Spanish capital's main airport.
It was officially opened on Feb. 4, 2006, by Spanish Prime Minister Jose
Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

"Whatever the means of approach, by air or by land, the sheer scale and
complexity of what has been tackled and achieved here cannot be
overestimated," the judges said of the design.

"In response to the key challenge: that of efficiently processing constantly
changing passenger flows and associated luggage handling, the resulting
building presents a straightforward linear diagram in the form of a clear
sequence of spectacular spaces for both departing and arriving passengers."

The Stirling Prize honors the building that has made the greatest
contribution to British architecture in the past year. The winner must be a
RIBA member and the building can be anywhere in the European Union.

The other finalists were a private house in London, the glass-clad Evelina
Children's Hospital in London, an east London library, the National Assembly
of Wales in Cardiff, also designed by the Richard Rogers Partnership, and
renowned Iraqi-born architect Zaha Hadid's Phaeno Science Center in
Wolfsburg, Germany.

The award is named after architect Sir James Stirling, who died in 1992.

Previous winners of the prize, now in its 11th year, include the Scottish
Parliament building and London's cigar-shaped 40-story glass skyscraper,
popularly known as the "Gherkin."

On the Net:

RIBA:

www.riba.org/go/RIBA/Home.html

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