Awful Airport Design or Successful College Project?

There are several "worthless" degrees you can get in college.  Most of them mean well but very few of them will actually help prepare you for a career in that profession.  However, some require you have a degree to even be considered. 

Architecture is one such degree.  This is considered a professional degree which is a minimum of 5 years learning about various building systems, design and sometimes a little practical knowledge.  Of course what it doesn't prepare you for is the 10 years after graduation stuck drawing details and fetching coffee for the project Architect who has already put in their time in the trenches and feels entitled.

Yes, the degree will get you in the door but the fight is long from finished. 

This is something I didn't understand during my Architecture studies and instead took my learning serious and applied a good amount of logic to all of my projects, never really experimenting with something that "shouldn't" be built because it wasn't practical or was impossible to achieve.

Alex Sutton, a grad student from Bartlett School of Architecture in London, seems to have thrown all logic to the wind and decided to experiment with a new style of airport that isn't on the ground and far from the city but rather elevated and placed in the empty space between buildings.  On paper this looks like a good use of "empty space" however creates a whole list of problems including (but not limited to) excessive noise, wind, broken windows, plane crashes and let’s not forget that once you cover a street with a runway that street no longer gets any light.

Alex positioned one of his airports over water which helps this but still isn’t much better.

Ever wonder why buildings in New York are stepped back after a certain number of floors?  Seems people began to miss having sunlight on their streets and didn’t like getting blown over due to powerful winds coming down the sides of buildings so they passed an ordinance requiring a certain amount of "free air" on a building lot. 

Overall I say this is a great project, very radical and so horrible that it went viral.  Let’s hope it lands him a great job to help offset the pain of being a draftsman with a degree.

Related Web URL: http://www.dezeen.com/2015/07/13/stockholm-airport...