Chek Lap Kok Airport, Hong Kong (Bespoke Ceiling)

The SAS ceiling at Chek Lap Kok International Airport, born out of the Stansted experience, is a very functional and practical engineering solution to the Foster and Partners design requirements. The roof structure is constructed from a series of ‘I’ beams connected at noad points forming parallelograms, the parallelograms being joined together to form a 36 x 36m vault. Each parallelogram is installed with 8 No. triangles resulting in 4 No. visible triangles. Approximately 78,000 panels were supplied to the project pre-engineered allowing them to be simply fixed to the structure on site. A surface area of approximately 160,000m².

The perforated and plain edge panels are manufactured from aluminium with a 25 year anti corrosion guarantee electrostatic polyester powder paint finish. The concealed fixing system allows the panels to individually hinge down for void access. 14,000m² of panels used on the exterior of the building were specially designed to withstand extreme weather conditions including force 14 typhoons. These panels were manufactured from 3mm aluminium with a PVF2 paint finish. The design of the roof structure rises and falls along the length of the terminal building achieved by cranking the angle of the roof at the 36 metre modular junctions. Over 3,500 unique special panels were required to accommodate these subtle variants in the structure.

SAS supplied 4Km of valley panels as an infill between each vaulted bay. Approximately 1,000 different size panels were used many of which are tapered to accommodate the design of the structural metalwork.