DESIGN & BUILD: CHENGDU, HONG KONG, SHANGHAI IN CHINA AND JEJU IN SOUTH KOREA

Spotlight on ADPI’s projects in China and South Korea.

Winning the contract to design the new 100mppa capacity Beijing Daxing International Airport appears to be just the start for ADP Ingénierie  (ADPI) in China, which continues to expand its business interests across the country.

Indeed, in addition to Bejing Daxing, ADPI – a wholly-owned subsidiary of Aéroports de Paris – is currently working at Chengdu Shuangliu, Hong Kong and Shanghai Pudong airports in China.

“Asia-Pacific region and China are an important part of Aéroports de Paris Group’s international strategy,” admits ADP CEO, Olivier Berger.

“The region’s middle class will quadruple over the next 20 years and China is set to become the world’s number one aviation market. However, to achieve this, it will need to expand its infrastructure massively to cope with the traffic forecast. 

“Airport planning, design, management and consulting. There will be a lot of opportunities for our experts to help them meet the challenge.”

New Chengdu airport

In conjunction with Chinese partners, ADPI has won the international competition for the master plan and design of the passenger terminal at Chengdu’s planned new $11 billion gateway.

Located 51 kilometres south-east of the capital of Sichuan province, Chengdu Tianfu International Airport is expected to have a single terminal and three runways capable of handling 40 million passengers and 700,000 tonnes of cargo per annum when it opens in 2019.

However, China’s desire to build a mega-hub means that the airport will ultimately boast six runways and the capacity to accommodate up to 90 million passengers and two million tonnes of cargo per annum.

Such capacity would make the airport one of the largest gateways in mainland China and ensure that it will be one of only three cities in the country to have two major airports after Beijing and Shanghai.

Chengdu’s existing Shuangliu Airport, built in 1938, is the fifth busiest airport in the country and serves as a hub for inland China destinations for carriers such as Air China, AirAsia X and Korean Air among others.

New highways, subways and intercity railways will link the new airport to downtown Chengdu and other parts of the city.

According to ADPI, it faced stiff opposition from a number of international design teams to win the design competition for Chengdu Tianfu International Airport.

The design of the new airport (pictured on page 36) is expected to resemble a golden sunbird, which is Chengdu’s logo.

ADPI says that it is currently working in co-operation with Chinese firm, CSWADI, on “optimising the architectural concept for the airport”.

Hong Kong International Airport

In partnership with the local branch of global engineering specialists, Meinhardt, ADPI has won the tender to design an extension to the main terminal (Terminal 1) that will raise the airport’s capacity by up to 10mppa.

This involves primarily expanding the terminal’s landside area in order to enhance the check-in and baggage-handling facilities, as well as passenger flows.

ADPI is also working on an apron extension to provide parking space for 24 additional widebody aircraft. 

Shanghai Pudong

ADPI has been selected by the Chinese authorities and one of the main local design institutes to audit the future development projects at Shanghai Pudong International Airport.

It claims that the contract illustrates the quality of the relationship between ADPI and Shanghai Pudong, which dates back to the 1990s when Aéroports de Paris carried out the preparation of the gateway’s master plan and studies for its first terminal.

Shanghai Pudong exceeded the 50-million-passenger mark in 2014 and forecasts for traffic growth are expecting it to reach an annual throughput of 80 million passengers by 2020.

South Korea 

Lastly, ADPI has recently been selected to conduct upstream studies on two provincial airports in South Korea – Jeju and a planned new gateway in Youngham.

At Jeju International Airport it has been commissioned to conduct a study that investigates the possibility of expanding the country’s third-largest airport, while in Youngnam it is currently working with the Korean Transport Institute (KOTI) on a feasibility study for a new airport in the south-east of the country.

Berger is quick to point out that ADPI’s attraction to the Asia-Pacific region is not a recent phenomenon.

“We have a long standing background in Asia, with significant references in the past, such as Shanghai Pudong’s first terminal, Kansai Airport in Osaka, Japan, and Jakarta Soekarno Hatta in Indonesia,” he says.

“With the help of our Hong-Kong regional office and our subsidiary in Beijing, we recently won several major international design competitions in the region. We are also proud to be associated with the development of Hong-Kong International Airport, one of the best and most efficient airports in the world.”