TWA Flight Center
The TWA Flight Center is the old Terminal 5 at John F. Kennedy airport in New York. It is currently used by Jetblue.
Built and designed by Eero Saarinen for Trans World Airlines (TWA) terminal was opened on 28 May 1962. Given the onset of mass tourism Saarinen designed the terminal to accommodate the increasing number of passengers. The TWA Flight Center should thanks to its procedural disposition and technical resources to ensure a smooth with speed and passenger handling. The external appearance of the airport hall evokes a large bird with outstretched wings. According to the architect Meinhard von Gerkan she looks "like a flying dinosaur, wonderful ." Saarinen designed four barrel vaults made of reinforced concrete according to purely formal point of view and without regard to the ideal static load behavior of the vault. The structure thus corresponds in no way those slender shell structures, such as engineers Torroja, Nervi, Candela and Catalano design time to a minimum to span spaces of material. The building owner marketed the terminal of the first publication on 12 November 1957 intensive. This now common combination of architecture and marketing was new.
Following the acquisition of TWA by American Airlines in 2001, the terminal was closed due to its operational inadequacy and was then open to the public only for a few exhibitions. At the latest as from 1970, the first wide-body jets had to be put into the departure hall proved to be unsuitable for inclusion namely the increasing number of passengers. The finally recognized the low-cost airline JetBlue, on the eve of the TWA Flight Center, according to the plans of the office Gensler was the 2008 build a new terminal building. This project aroused considerable protest, because the feared a devaluation of the old terminal. Nevertheless, the departure gates of the TWA Flight Center had to give way to the new building, the main building remained standing meanwhile. Discussions about a takeover by JetBlue were unsuccessful. Saarinen departure lounge is not to unite with today's operational requirements in a straight line, which is why it is empty, and their fate is open. Currently, the TWA Flight Center is being renovated by historic preservation point of view. The future use is open.
The building is a historical monument since 1994, and since 2005 it is on the National Register of Historic Places.