Client: BAA plc
Architect: Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners
Structural Engineer: Arup
Services Engineer: DSSR/Arup
Quantity Surveyor: Turner & Townsend/E.C. Harris
Retail Consultant: Chapman Taylor
Civil Engineer: Mott McDonald
Principal Contractors: Laing O’Rourke/Mace/Balfour Beaty/AMEC
Construction Management: BAA plc

Finally complete, Heathrow Terminal 5 is ready to show its passengers why it’ll be first class all the way at the new mega structure.

It has taken 18 long years for Richard Rogers’ design for Terminal 5 to come to fruition. After winning the competition back in 1989 (planning actually started in 1982), Heathrow Airport's Terminal 5 is on schedule to receive its first passengers on the 27th of March, almost two decades later.

Situated on a former sewage works, construction of the glass and steel structure was far from straightforward; two rivers had to be diverted, a new spur road from the M25 had to be built, the Heathrow Express and London Underground Piccadilly Line had to be extended and provision for future rail links to the west had to be created.

As well as all that, the architect’s original design assumed there would be a lot more land available – several redesigns later, due in part to the limited space the team ended up having to work with, the result is a high-rise terminal building stacked on seven levels that plunges deep into the ground to conceal its bulk. The designers have been lauded for managing to create a sense of space and airiness in the 300,000m2 building, despite the level of compaction that was necessary due to the limited space.

From the start, Rogers saw the inclusion of a large welcoming area in front of the main terminal as a crucial element of the design. In this way, passengers will not arrive at the terminal and just walk off the kerb straight into the building.

The terminal is nowhere near as colourful as the Stirling winning Barajas Airport; colour appears tentatively from the glass-encased circulation shafts framed in yellow, red, blue and green and from the yellow that appears at key points in the building to indicate the path through the departures concourse. Standard design elements, from brushed-steel columns supporting lighting to the circular metal discs used as soffits, create a particular language and make sure that retailers cannot introduce too many alien design features.

The roof, which has been described as the most impressive feature of the terminal, reaches 37 metres (120 feet) at its highest point above the ground. However aircraft operations do not allow any structures above 39 metres (128 feet), effectively ruling out the use of cranes to put the structure in place.

Rather than jack the arches individually, it was decided to assemble whole sections, consisting of two structural bays and one infill section, on the airport apron before raising them into position. This means that most of the work took place on the ground, making assembly a relatively easy and safe procedure. In addition to the structure, the roof covering, delivered to the site as 3,000 pre-assembled cassettes, was also assembled on the apron and slotted into position prior to the roof lift.

Terminal 5 - In numbers

£4.3 billion is the total cost of construction, it will cater for 30 million passengers a year, it’s the largest freestanding building at 396 x 176 x 40m (the size of 50 football pitches), it took 20,000 workers 37 million man hours to build, it contains 30,000m2 of glass, 150,000 tonnes of steel reinforcement, 90,000 tonnes of structural steel, 1.2 million m3 of concrete and 2,300km of cabling, 85% of the rainwater that hits the building will be re-used, 3,800 cars can fit into the multi-storey car park, 34,000 trees, plants and shrubs planted in the terminal, 96 "fast bag drops" in the departures hall, 2,500 passengers can be catered for in the airline lounges