Terminal Building For Momona

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29335, 14 October 1960, Page 21

Terminal Building For Momona

Construction of the terminal building for the new Dunedin airport at Momona will begin Shortly. Momona will be the first major airport to be planned from the ground up by the Ministry of Works. Its facilities will also include a control tower, the layout of which may become the standard for future buildings. A passenger lounge measuring 80ft by 50ft will ocupy a third of the terminal building’s floor area of 12,000 square feet. It will include waiting space, dining area, shop, first aid room, toilets, and observation balcony. The side of the building facing the tarmac will have a glass wall. A large freight office of 3000 square feet will handle passengers’ luggage and air The administration section will include airline offices, pilots’ and hostesses’, rooms, and staff dining rooms. Electrical wiring embedded in the reinforced concrete floor will heat the building. The heatrethntive floor will reduce the

system’s power consumption at peak periods by storing heat produced when loads are light.

The terminal building’s main framing will be-steel and its interior will be finished in New Zealand timbers. The wall facing the road approach will be brick, the other walls and the singlepitch roof above the lounge asbestos, and the remaining roofs aluminium. The terminal ground* will be landscaped. Provision for extension includes space for a mezzanine floor to accommodate more offices, and end walls which can be easily dismantled.

Passengers boarding and alighting from buses, cars and taxig will walk the short distances to the terminal building through covered ways. For a start there will be parking, space for 100 cars.

The airport control facilities at Momona will be housed in a flvestorey control tower and a single storey annex. The 50ft high tower will house a garage, communicationa equipment room, offices,

radar operations room, air conditioning room and control cab. The octagonal control cab on the fourth floor will measure 20ft by 16ft. It will be fitted with double glass windows set at an angle to reduce reflections. The outer panes will be heatabsorbent and there will be a cavity between them and the inner panes to provide sound insulation and further protection against heat. An acoustic ceiling and timber floor covered with carpeting will improve the sound insulation. Special lighting fittings will eliminate reflections at night. To ensure conditions which will be comfortable to work in and suitable for the equipment, the control cab and radar operations room will be air-condi-tioned. This will be most essential in the radar operationa room, which will be blacked out to assist viewing the screens. The various radio aids will include precision approach and surveillance radar. The first four floors of the con-

trol tower will have' reinforced concrete walls and floors and aluminium-framed windows. The walls and window frames of the cab will be steel.

The annex, which will be linked with the tower by a covered way, will house communications equipment, the radio workshop, and meteorological section. Pressurised mechanical ventilation will keep the communications equipment room and radio workshop, and the equipment they contain, free from dust. The annex will have concrete floors and foundations, timber-framed walls faced with bricks and aluminiumframed windows. Its flat timber roof will be covered with aluminium. Speedy transmission of messages between the tower and the annex will be provided by a pneumatic tube system.

The new airport buildings were designed by the Architectural Division of the Ministry of Work* in close collaboration with the Dunedin City Council, the Civil Air Administration, and National Airways Corporation.