Learning from Tegel.
Our love for Berlin, and in particular the city’s transport infrastructure, is rooted in Anais’ four-year residency and Dennis’ pre- and post-unification travels. The extensive rail network of S-Bahn and U-Bahn lines (and well considered stations) make navigating the city an easy task, while Tempelhof, Tegel and Willy Brandt make for a fascinating typology study in aviation.
When thinking of Berlin, we can’t resist extolling the sense of optimism that was Tegel Airport. Tegel reflected all that air travel was meant to be, a stress-free method of getting from point A to point B. For anyone who travelled through Tegel they will remember the clarity of wayfinding and the ease of traversing the facility to board and disembark an aircraft.
Tegel evolved from dis-used military airfield to a critical artery supplying Berlin during the cold war. Considered a supporting facility to Tempelhof airport, Tegel quickly became a lifeline of commercial traffic in the mid 60’s. The 1970’s passenger facility designed in the famous octagon plan shaped was a model of efficiency and elegance.
Perhaps it was the scale of the terminal that left one with an indelible mark of optimism and joy, or maybe it was the German efficiency of understanding process. Similar to Berlin’s impressive rail stations, Tegel was able to reduce travel to its most basic elements: ticket control, identity control, then off you go. Tegel was a sign of the times which facilitated person travel based, not on auxiliary commercial offer, but on effective operational methodologies. It was zen-like experience in that one spent such a brief moment there, no dwell, no shopping, no fluff.
Tegel’s famously narrow floor plate gave a sense that when you were dropped at the kerb you could almost see into the aircraft from which you would depart. Compare Tegel to say Roissy’s T1 (Paul Andreu and the birth of the Aéroports de Paris) of the same period and you can find similarities in travel as civilised adventure. However, contrary to Andreu’s circular inward-looking terminal, Tegel was an outward focus facility flooded with daylight and providing strong visual clues for the passenger. Andreu’s T1 was a mega scale in comparison providing the passenger with a journey within a journey replete with futuristic inclined travelators descending below the taxiways to remote satellites.
Tegal was lean, but in no ways mean. Departing passengers had the space they needed to say good-bye without navigating endless retail, the single level departure diagram permitted view of both aircraft and loved ones left behind. Passengers arriving from an exhausting flight were immediately perked up to disembark into a daylit baggage hall with a landside view to those who were there to greet them.
It is ironic that Tegel was decommissioned to make room for Berlin Brandenburg Airport (Willy Brandt) which was famously nearly a decade in delay for commissioning mishaps and design flaws. Will Brandt, a product of the mega box approach to air travel, reflects already outdated approach to car park revenue and passenger spend on retail and high-end luxury goods.
Today’s passenger facilities are designed for instability of the airline industry and the big box approach anticipates a host of air carriers to come and go and operate as the market dictates. To the facility operator, this means creating parallel non-aviation revenue streams, to the passenger this translates to retail offer, mega food courts, and commercial opportunities rooted in extracting spend from a “captive audience”.
Covid was a shake-up of the aviation industry, which although bouncing back, is still trying to find its feet. Air travel will continue to evolve, and the challenge today is how to juggle passenger experience, operational efficiency (of which security remains paramount), and commercial profitability with equal measures. The age-old aviation dichotomy of airline operators wanting maximum call-to-gate times (ensure quick boarding & stand turnover), against airport operators desiring minimum call-to-gate times (maximum dwell time & passenger spend) remains unresolved and is perhaps aviation’s most important design challenge.
All this effects passenger experience and impacts the traveller’s impression of a facility. In many ways Tegel’s scale was its strength and its weakness. It was big enough to serve passengers effectively, but too small to meet changing needs in revenue thresholds. In aviation design terms the key will be to retain the aspects of what facilities like Tegel offered to reimagine our future facilities in a way that places the passenger first.
