Approaching Control Center
The APP-Q Project is a public infrastructure for national flight control. It is located inside Quito’s International Airport.
This type of building is difficult to understand due to its functional complexity, but the aim of the project is to explain what happens at its interior taking benefit of the opportunity to re-think a public infrastructure with large accessibility requirements.
The APP-Q Project is a public infrastructure for national flight control. It is located inside Quito’s International Airport.
The programmatic conditions are complex due to the work that is developed inside the building as well as to the characteristics of the location. The Approaching Control Center is situated behind the control tower of the airport; that is why it may be interpreted as a horizontal control tower.
This type of building is difficult to understand due to its functional complexity, but the aim of the project is to explain what happens at its interior taking benefit of the opportunity to re-think a public infrastructure with large accessibility requirements.
The building has three independent and accessible blocks: One for flight controllers, a second for technical purposes and a third for the headquarters. The second and third block are linked through a ramp as a vertical connection.
So, why raise a second level if a building like this one could be solved with a single level?
The design began by the idea of generate global accessibility to the building. For this reason, the ramp becomes an articulating instrument for the space and creates middle and superior levels, which support all users’ demands. However, not only the ramp provides the accessibility, but also the space is ergonomic to allow any person with motor handicap to perform any activity.
Ecuador has imposing Andean mountains and Tababela offers a wonderful landscape. This is a secondary reason to support the idea of the block elevation in the project. So, the ramp becomes a three-height landscape observatory at the resting areas. These areas are important because of the great effort and stress environment of the work developed inside the building.
Moreover, the site of the location has an extreme solar incidence. Because of that, it was necessary to think about a strategy to condition the building interior using its geometry as a thermal instrument. These weather characteristics were taken into consideration to develop weather conditioning without excessive mechanical systems:
- A pergola system protects the main circulation found in the ramp and the flight controllers’ block access.
- The second level block is above a column forest that allows free air circulation; it creates shadow to receive benefit of an empty space as a resting or transit area. Plus, Tababela’s fruit trees are interpreted at the column forest that supports this horizontal block.
Also an essential aspect of the project is that worldwide flight control is managed through AIP technology. This technology gives support to all in-flight airplanes and sets the path to follow for each airplane, which is the main axis for flight control. Therefore, these paths give rise to the project insignia and are shown at the building façade. The paths traced are the ones for the most important cities in Ecuador and represent the Ecuadorian AIP map. These airways that are carved with marks, can be perceived by touch in the morning when approaching to the building, making the project recognisable because of material. In addition, because the carving could not be seen at night, it was decided to represent the project through LED light to mark the façade with the principal airways’ route. In this way, the perception of the project is global
