Mactan
International
Airport
Asia’s first wooden airport terminal
Location:
Lapu-Lapu, Mactan Cebu, Philippines
Architecture:
IDA – Integrated Design Association Ltd., Hongkong
Building owner:
Konsortium GMR MEGAWIDE Cebu Airport Corporation (GMCAC), Philippines
Dimensions:
4.500 m³ glulam
Mactan International Airport in the Philippines is Asia’s first airport to have a roof structure made entirely of glulam. In the course of the expansion of the second largest airport in the Philippines – for which a new 65,000-m² terminal has been built for international flights to 23 destinations – its annual capacity was more than doubled to 12 million passengers. Design, ecological and traditional reasons all led the choice to fall on the most sustainable of all building materials, wood.
“The challenge was to design the building joints to survive the movements occurring in the event of an earthquake, as well as the anchoring of the main beams to the concrete structure, as the bracing ended at a height of 6.5 metres and could not be routed to the ground.”
Anton Wanas, project manager, Rubner
Rubner supplied a total of 4,500 m³ of glulam for the load-bearing structure of the architecturally striking, undulating barrel roof, which has a height of 15 metres and a span of 30 metres. Rubner also prefabricated the 23-metre arched truss halves. The components were shipped to the Philippines in three tranches via the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal and Antwerp then assembled in Lapu-Lapu City on the island of Mactan in just three months under Rubner’s supervision. Construction was accomplished according to European standards, among the strictest in the world.
The project was completed in 2018.
