Complex Structural Systems for the Jewel Changi Airport

Jewel Changi Airport, a nature-themed entertainment and retail complex on the landside at Changi Airport, Singapore, is their newest development, opening this year. The unusual building, conceived by the firm Safdie Architects, extends the airport’s principal function as a transit hub to enfold an interactive civic plaza and marketplace, combining landside airport operations with expansive indoor gardens and waterfall, leisure facilities, retail, restaurants, a hotel, and other spaces for community activities. The combined intensive marketplace and paradise garden create a new civic center – “the heart and soul” of Changi Airport, as the airport leaders call it – and a new paradigm for community-centered airport design. …