private airport terminal
muscat, oman
2016 – 2018
Competition: 1st Prize
COMPLETED
photo by f&M
render & video by metroarea
The Crew Reporting Building is a private terminal for Oman’s national airline, built as part of the new Muscat International Airport to optimize and speed up crew operations ahead of departure.
It is characterized by lines and forms inspired by stealth aircraft,
including in its color — black — which represents a genuine departure in a country where the law permits only white or sand-colored buildings.
The façade, 105 metres long, features more than 200 blue lights, the airline’s color, and faces north: an orientation that excludes direct solar radiation on the large glazed surface, reducing the thermal load on the envelope. Above it, a deep overhang shields the crew pick-up and drop-off area from the sun, served by a multi-lane roadway allowing vehicles carrying pilots and cabin crew to stop and depart simultaneously during peak hours.
It is an innovative, high-technology building, and has the distinction of being the first building visible on arrival in Oman, on exiting the main airport.
In form, the building is a great portal, a contemporary reinterpretation of the urban gateway that ancient Omanis once passed through at the start and end of their journeys,
becoming a gateway to the sky. The building has a footprint of 105 x 33 metres, arranged over two levels, within a plot of approximately 27,000 sqm, of which 13,000 sqm are allocated to parking.
The CRB is specifically where pre-flight briefings for pilots and cabin crew take place, following a tightly controlled and precise sequence. The ground floor is entirely dedicated to access, screening, briefing and crew waiting areas: from the landside entrance, staff check in at self-service kiosks, pass document control via e-gates and assisted desks, and undergo security screening with X-ray machines and metal detectors, before reaching the gate hold rooms and boarding gates to the airside buses to the aircraft. A mirrored route manages arriving flows, with hold baggage returned on a dedicated belt and customs control before landside exit. The terminal can also be used by other airlines and by VIP passengers who do not follow the traditional airport route.
The upper floor houses the airline’s general control offices and emergency management rooms, with 120 highly advanced technology workstations.
Developing such a complex and ambitious project required an enormous amount of analysis and research, which Metroarea carried out in Oman together with F&M ingegneria as leader designer and specialized Italian consultants, combining architectural design with an in-depth analysis of flows and operational capacity needed to ensure the building’s proper scalability over time. Design and construction were completed in record time (a year and a half in total), and the building was inaugurated in 2018.
project renderings:
