The city of Pittsburgh already has what is generally considered to be one of the best airports in the country. Now it’s about to get even better.
The city is nearing completion on a renovation project that architects say will be more reflective of the community of western Pennsylvania.
A new terminal for the new Pittsburgh International Airport is expected to be completed early next year.
When CEO Christina Cassotis began her tenure at PIT in 2015, the airport was in the midst of a master planning process.
“We realized we had a real opportunity to modernize our infrastructure,” said Cassotis, “and to really have it reflect and serve the community through the design. We wanted to make sure that what was being built was an airport for Pittsburgh; it was going to reflect this region, and it was going to feel like it reflected the community. We wanted to make sure that we could partner with architects that would really understand the community and reflect that through design.”
“We created our own process to find the right design team,” said Paul Hoback, executive vice president and chief development officer at PIT. “We wanted to find a firm that was going to be very collaborative, but also disruptive and not avoid conflict.”
Ultimately, PIT chose three global engineering and architecture firms to collaborate on the project: Luis Vidal, Gensler and HDR.
Airport leadership took the newly assembled team on immersion tours of the Pittsburgh community to convey a sense of the region they wanted to incorporate in the design of the new PIT.
“What I think this airport design is doing is really bringing the local flavor, colors, texture of Pittsburgh and the Western Pennsylvania region, but it’s also creating those memorable spatial moments where people are going to just pause and relate to all five of the senses,” said architect Carolyn Sponza, Pittsburgh studio lead and principal at Gensler.
“The use of nature — natural light, ventilation, color, vegetation, outdoor activity — all those things are very rare in an airport,” said Luis Vidal, “and this will be one of the very first airports in the world to take advantage of all these possibilities.”
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