Point of VIEW. A
purely analytical perception...
|
Japan
AN EXAMPLE TO FOLLOW | Continued
from pg. 5
Japan
has become the home of great projects and of all of those we have looked at, the
Kansai Airport is probably the most amazing.
It was the largest single public works project of the 20th Century
and when you consider the structures that have been created in the last 100 years,
you are talking about a lot. When the second stage of Kansai Airport (Osaka) is
completed, the total cost of the two combined stages will have been an eye opening
$22 billion. The airport is located
on an island five miles from land, and when it’s total construction cost was originally
announced no one in Japan seemingly could
even fathom its price tag. The airport
was built on a 504-hectare island located in almost sixty feet of spongy clay
seabed. Its landing fees are the
highest in the world, and yet a second expansion of the facility is planned that
will eclipse the first stage in cost. In
spite of the airport only recently having been completed and with Japanese bureaucrats
interested primarily in attempting to impress Olympic Officials for Osaka’s bid
for the 2008 Olympic Games, government officials formally announced their intention
to build another runway, 4,000 meters long, with a satellite terminal building,
a second passenger terminal building and cargo and fuelling facilities.
Ultimately, the plan is for the airport’s total area to be doubled, have
but these expansion announcements had been made even before the architectural
and economic problems had even been addressed.
The airport’s terminal is the longest building ever erected by man, one-mile
long and ten stories high. Japan, a diminutive country with
a very large and highly concentrated population, is at a distinct disadvantage
in the airline business. Land anywhere
close to large cities is extremely costly, and in terms of a modern new jetport,
financially prohibitive. Thus, for
the most part, Japanese planners have determined that their best bet is to expand
seaward, but at a massive cost. In
the meantime, as they attempt to open new and sophisticated engineering frontiers
within their architecture, modest mistakes tend to greatly magnify themselves
and soon become whoppers. However, It was known from the very beginning that it would
be difficult to maintain the land under Kansai Airport on a perfectly level basis
because of the fact that it is built on top of a spongy seabed bottom.
On the other hand, they did not expect the airport to sink back
into the sea, which is exactly what seems to be now happening.
On the other hand, Kobe along with
Osaka, Japan’s largest city next to Tokyo had every reason to believe that their
local airport facilities were quickly becoming saturated and outmoded. It was
critical to have a method available to get their goods to market and to get them
their on time. It was at this time,
that Italian architect Renzo Piano
was engaged to create a modernistic terminal in the shape of a wing. It was four
stories high and when looked from the ground is in the shape, of a toroid that
mimics that of a magnetic field. His design centered around an ocean location
three miles away from the nearest land, only because there was no land available
within reasonable proximity to the cities. In order to keep the airport level
(in reality to keep it from coming apart at the seams), a mammoth system of hydraulic
jacks was put in place under the airports foundation, and a highly complex, computerized
system raises and lowers the 3-million ton structure as if it were a babe in arms.
There seems to be no question that
Piano carried out his job in superb fashion, and when it was finished, the airport
was considered an architectural and engineering miracle.
The terminal is built with passenger comfort in mind, and the facilities
are extremely spacious. The Kansai Airport concourse is made of glistening marble,
which is almost constantly being polished, keeping it at a high state of gloss.
Moreover, a gleaming double-decker bridge whisks people from the airport
to the mainland in a manner of minutes.
In addition, should you desire to travel from the airport to Kobe, a jet-boat
is available on airport property, as well as a train which can take you non-stop
to Kyoto, Japan’s premier tourist city.
Moreover,
as with almost all their massive infrastructure projects, the Japanese severely
under-estimated its final cost of construction. When all of the bills were finally tallied, the overruns were
in the neighborhood of 50%. These
additional costs have been blamed, in part, on the fact that the Airport’s president
was its also chief executive officer and as such awarded all of the contracts
to political associates. United States
companies in particular were blackballed from the bidding process, and things
became so heated that the U.S. Government filed formal protests against the highly
biased Japanese system.
Suspicions
about corruption in the bidding process later proved to be entirely justified
when the airport’s president was indicted and eventually convicted of having taken
large bribes to rig contracts.
On the other hand, the airport opened at the worst of all possible times,
due to the fact that the Pacific Rim financial crises had just erupted and business
in general had already started tailing off.
In the meantime, Osaka had shown little or no growth in its industry, totally
throwing into a “cocked hat” all economic forecasts for the airport had been originally
assembled. The landing fees were so out of line that most American carriers cut
back their flights to and from Kansai dramatically, and this plague soon spread
to the airlines of other countries.
Kansai came to its senses and began offering discounts for new routes and
an 11% across the board discount which went into effect early in 2001. Some interesting economic statistics
were brought to light in the Sydney Morning Herald in a story entitled “It’s Banzai
for Kansai“ by Ben Hills: “It
will cost nearly 1 million yen ($13,000) to land a Boeing 747 on Kansai’ single
windswept runway – that’s three times as much as the charge in Hong Kong, 14 times
more than London’s Heathrow, and nearly 30 times as much as Los Angeles International
Airport. Sky-high charges for rents and services will mean passengers
will be slugged $13 for a cup of coffee, a departure tax of $35 and $18 for the
bus to downtown Osaka, 30 miles away.” Half
the airlines that originally planned to fly to the new airport have pulled out.
There will be just 317 international flights a week on its single 3,800
yard runway, and the airport – originally planned as Japan’s first 24 – hour gateway
– will have its power turned off at night to save money. Last week the president of the airport authority, Tsunehara
Hattori, finally conceded that Kansai would be a financial disaster.
It will lose nearly $2 million a day - $700 million in its first year –
and may never pay a dividend to its long-suffering investors and taxpayers.
The
Kansai Airport Authority was formed by a consortium of over a 1,000 local companies,
along with various government organizations.
The first move out of the box for engineers was to start moving earth from
the recesses of Osaka into the bay to be used as landfill but first “the scuba
divers had to descend 60 feet to the bay’s floor and create a base. This required
the divers to move heavy boulders into place by hand.
Then came the barges which unloaded 750 million cubic feet of rock and
gravel to create a 2.5-mile long, 4,000-foot-wide mass – the world’s biggest man-made
island.”
The amount of earth that was ultimately transferred became literally astounding.
When completed, the land under the airport contained 70 times the volume
of the Great Egyptian Pyramid. In
spite of the movement of all of the earth, the deadline for the airport had to
be extended several times because the project had started sinking into the sea
even before it was completed.
It
has already been admitted by airport officials that if a heavy storm happens to
blow by, substantial elements of the airport will be underwater. The airport has
already sunk 17 feet and no one seems to believe that it has stopped. Actually,
engineers estimate that currently, the island is dropping 2-inches a month, or
two feet a year. “Despite hydraulic
supports driven into forty meters of rock, and sensors which are supposed to detect
the settling if it exceeds even ten millimeters, Japanese officials have announced
plans to reinforce the structure of the terminal building to minimize any risk
to the 10,000 passengers that can pass through Kansai Airport in one day.”
Because of this and other navigational problems, the airport is the only one in
the world with two lighthouses. The
concern is that in inclement weather, shipping will run right into the airport
property. Can you imagine what would
happen to the Japanese “face” should a boat hit a plane as it is taking
off? In
the meantime, the area is known to have some of the worst weather on the planet
and naturally, everyone is aware of the giant Kobe earthquake that occurred not
so long ago. As I recall it, Kansai Airport was approximately seventeen-miles
from the quake's epicenter and that quake was a whopper. It measured 7.2 on the
Richter Scale. They say that the airport could withstand a quake rated at 9 on
the scale, but to put that in prospective, a measurement of around 11 on the scale
would split the earth in half so it gives you an idea of the power that was unleashed.
However, the airport only moved a coupled of inches and whatever damage
it created was minor. The airport’s next test came from a typhoon that slammed
the airport and the bridge leading to the mainland with130 mile winds, about as
fearsome as a typhoon gets. Once again, damage was minimal with the exception
of the fact that so much water was dumped on the bridge that it had to be closed
to traffic. The bridge and the airport are said to be equipped to handle 190 mile
an hour winds, something that almost never occurs. By
the time engineers had finished filling and refilling the earth, Kannan Kada Mountain
located in the Osaka area had been totally carved up and carted into the bay.
With this amount of environmental rhubarb going around, the fishermen started
complaining bitterly to the Japanese Government, saying that the seabed’s that
produced their catches was being destroyed.
The water quality had unquestionably deteriorated, and what was once a
glimmering blue sea had now become a churning brown waterway containing little
life. The fishermen were determined
to be and they were reimbursed millions upon millions of dollars for their commercial
and preceded to file suits against every governmental authority in sight and when
the dust had cleared, they collected a massive amount of damages. The fees that
they received were basically for relocation as it was universally assumed that
the area would never again be financially logical for commercial fishing.
On
an airport-to-airport basis, an interesting comparison in cost was made with the
recently opened state-of-the-art, Denver Airport in the United States.
Experts had estimated that the Denver Airport has five times the capacity
of Kansai and was delivered at one-fifth the cost.
On an efficiency basis, the Denver Airport seems to be 25 times more viable
than that of Kansai. In addition,
the Kansai Airport could not necessarily be considered to be an all weather airport
having only one runway, which could be underwater at any given time.
In another bizarre development, female personal are subjected to severe
limitations on their work hours under Japanese law, and considering the fact Kansai
is supposed to be a 24-hour facility and the fact that almost the entire staff
handling check-in’s and reservations are female, we are not sure how this thing
is going to work itself out.
However,
there is no question that the Japanese Airport is a spectacular architectural
achievement and that the overall facility is literally awesome.
“The huge man-made island on which
the airport stands demonstrates the power of civil engineering to create an artificial
landscape, a kind of second nature. Likewise,
the Kansai Airport’s terminal, designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop in association
with Norikari Okabe, reveals the ability of its architects, engineers and contractors
to construct what in effect is a miniature city under one roof.
The 1.7 km long terminal has connected office buildings, interior shuttle
trains, elevated highways, car parks and commercial complexes that are like pieces
of a city displaced from the mainland and arranged in a more organized form…It
is a monumental structure. At the
same time it is also, the most playful air terminal built since Saarinen’s winged
TWA terminal at JFK, New York. Kansai’s
1.7 km of steel and facades flow down the island like a futuristic space shuttle.
The terminal with its centripetal docking wings, looking poised to soar
over the bay exudes the joy of travel…The building reflects the wind of change.
Piano added a pulse, which reflects human rhythms to buildings, designed
to smoothly execute functions. He
visualized the flow, the building then automatically acquired its expression.”
In
a late bid to join the Western World, Japan’s Kansai Airport has become a smuggler’s
paradise, as contraband goods flow through the facility as though it had sprung
a massive leak. Recently the airport confiscated 32.2 kilograms of drugs, including
marijuana, hashish, and hallucinogenic tablets.
In spite of the fact that there are almost two hundred customs inspectors
employed at the airport, they are not enough to handle the 20,000 passengers who
arrive daily. Thus, the situation
is simply that there are not enough airport security personnel to inspect everyone.
While the Japanese are really bummed out about this situation we don’t
think that they candle to contraband that flows in and out of the international
airports in the United States. Interestingly
enough, originally, one of the bizarre reasons for the erection of the Kansai
Airport was the fact that the neighboring airport at Narita was swiftly becoming
more of a joke than an airport. It
seems that six vegetable farmers did not want to give up their occupation and
location no matter how much money they were being offered and at last count, had
be able to hold up construction of a second runway and a general airport expansion
for over 25 years. It is apparent
from the substantial damage that these farmers have caused to the regional economy,
that Japanese law does not provide for eminent domain. In other words, in the United States if that same situation
had came up, a court would quickly determine a fair value for the property, the
farmers would be given a government check for that amount and then be hastily
escorted off the property by U.S. Marshals should they not want to leave.
Every
recent large airport in the world that has recently opened has had more than its
share of problems. While the problems at the airports in Denver and Hong Kong
were more of a highly technical nature, the problems at Kansai are much different.
In spite of a fairly smooth run early on, lately there has been nothing
but bad news. Cost overruns, the
fact that the airport is sinking into the sea, the building of a second runway
and terminal at a literally obscene price are all extremely serious problems.
However, the actual functioning of the airport has gone fairly well.
This facility, when all is said and done, will have cost in excess of $22
billion, a number, which so outdistances any runner-up airport in cost that comparisons
become meaningless. Probably a good
figure to use would be, that when the second stage has been completed, this airport
will have cost 5 times, what the next most expensive facility in the world has
cost with the possible exception of Hong Kong. On
the other hand, costs are going up as the land that would serve as the fill for
a new facility is gobbled up by construction projects.
Whatever the case, Kansai, is both an architectural and economic wonder.
It is unbelievable that the Japanese even undertook this project in the
first place, but, on the other hand, it well may be they had no choice. Previous Top
|
