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From: Architexturez-IN <admin-in@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2007 21:42:29 +0530
Architexturez-IN wrote:
While MIAL is tightlipped about the finer details, Newsline has learnt
that the design drawn up by MIAL’s master planners—Netherlands Airports
Consultants BV (NACO)—has now been trashed and swapped for a fresh
blueprint executed by the New York office of Skidmore, Owings and
Merrill (SOM), one of the largest architectural firms in the US.
Mumbai's long-overdue and embattled new domestic airport is partly
ready. I found myself suffering culture shock this week while being
ushered into an arrival terminal with acres of gleaming granite and an
overdose of stainless steel railings. There were water bodies and
newly-planted waving palms (for that Singapore feeling) and more
external awnings and multi-coloured banners than trade fairs in
Frankfurt, Osaka and Montreal put together. My taxi driver was in shock
too. "Wait!" he said, waving his arms frantically, "It's so new I don't
know where I've parked the car."
....
Many of the familiar scabs of an Indian airport were thriving leech-like
at Mumbai's departure terminal 10 hours later: Trolley touts badgering
passengers, paan-chewing cleaning ladies in dirty saris indolently
pushing garbage, and an escalator under repair so dangerously
unprotected that it brought back the horror story of a child at Delhi
airport some years ago who fell down an escalator hole and perished.
Teething troubles? If so, Mumbai International Airport Ltd, the
consortium of GVK and South African Airports, which won the project
through an international tender, must question every planner, architect,
designer, HR manager and traffic controller: Why isn't it working? Or
working as well as it should?
cont'd....
http://inhome.rediff.com/money/2007/sep/22mumbai.htm