Banjul Airport

For anyone who has been there it may come as something of a surprise that Rowan Moore, the Observer’s architecture critic, has selected Banjul Airport as one of his 10 favourite airports in the world. I must confess to having never really paid much attention to the place in my time there. I’ve always found airports to be a means to an end: classic non-places, liminal zones, transit areas where the senses shut down for a few hours. But on reading his short piece I guess it is quite a striking building, small and somewhat strangely formed. If nothing else, it’s given me an excuse to go back and have another look…

Banjul Airport, Gambia, wins a prize for its sheer indifference to all the usual clichés and conventions of airport design. True, it goes like many others for something a bit wing-like, but the gratuitous projections at its sides are nothing like the swoops of Saarinen or Piano. It also goes, for no particular reason, for an arch in its centre with a bigger inverted arch above. A tongue-like canopy then sticks out from the mouth-like arch. The work of the Senegalese Pierre Goudiaby Atepa, its main design principle would appear to be to do stuff for the sheer hell of it.

You can read the full article at the Observer website.

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