Writing in The Atlantic, Ian Bogost hails LaGuardia Airport as “an unbelievable airport” and “an surprising hero for infrastructural renewal.”

LaGuardia’s Terminal B has additionally earned an Honor Award within the 2022 AIANYS Design Awards, with AIANYS 2022 President Pasquale Marchese praising the architects for his or her “inventive options” which have a “profound influence on the communities they serve.”

A current Atlantic article explores how Terminal B’s progressive design has contributed to LaGuardia’s transformation. Excerpted from The Atlantic:

“Hero for American Infrastructural Renewal”

“In 2004, Steven Spielberg made a whole film in regards to the terror of getting caught for months in an airport, however I may be joyful by no means to go away the brand new LaGuardia. … For a really very long time, New York Metropolis’s LaGuardia Airport felt just like the intricately dressed set of an apocalypse movie. Unfold throughout its terminals had been deserted check-in stands gone feral, flooring damp with discharged moistures, low ceilings looming over darkish corridors. Now, close to the tip of a nine-year, $8 billion rebuild of its fundamental terminals and roadways, LaGuardia has grow to be an surprising hero for American infrastructural renewal. It’s an unbelievable airport.

“Terminal B, which homes most airways, seems like a theme park—in a great way. Delta’s Terminal C, nonetheless underneath building, has had its cramped and dingy concourses changed with ethereal new areas and a swank, cavernous airline membership. Throughout the airport, sedans and taxis breeze via drop-offs and pickups unencumbered. The plane taxiways movement now too, making arrivals and departures extra environment friendly. Slowly, phrase is getting out. Individuals return from the Massive Apple and discuss their journey to its airport as an alternative of its eating places or museums or theaters.”

Passengers First

“Airways and their passengers have conflicting objectives. An airline needs to get passengers to the gates and on the planes on time. Passengers wish to keep away from the boredom and discomfort that comes with spending time in airport seats. The one obtainable distractions—strolling, wanting, procuring, consuming, and leisure—come at the price of nervousness round departure.

“Terminal B makes an attempt to handle this downside in its bodily design. A central check-in and safety area results in this business zone, which then branches out to 2 concourses of gates, every accessed by way of a glass sky bridge that rises over the taxiways, planes passing beneath. Massive, constantly up to date signage exhibits vacationers the timing of their flights. Human brokers flank these indicators, able to reply questions and provides recommendation.”

NYC Proud

“The brand new LaGuardia aspires to be not simply any airport, however New York Metropolis’s airport. The fountain present in Terminal B provides place-ness; so do local-business outlet retailers, installations by native artists, and expansive views of the Manhattan skyline.”

Sky Bridges Protect Operations

“The constraint to maintain the airport totally operational obtained baked into the brand new design. At Terminal B, the dramatic sky bridges that ferry passengers from the business middle to the concourses had been put there not for drama, however to permit the builders to maintain the previous airport working beneath the bridges whereas the brand new one was constructed (after which the previous terminals had been demolished and become taxiways).”

Past Performance

“The terminal is a spot you wish to be in moderately than one you would like would simply spit you out once more. That is LaGuardia’s first lesson for rebuilders. Infrastructure can’t simply serve a useful objective, not anymore. It has to supply an expertise.”