Xian airport gets Design Solution

The Design Solution has been appointed to create retail planning concepts for a new terminal at China’s Xian Airport.

The consultancy, which will command a fee of between £25 000 and £50 000 for the work, will present concepts before the end of the year. The work includes outline retail planning and development of the retail ‘tenant mix’.

The objective is to maximise the airport’s commercial revenue.

The consultancy will travel to Xian this week to receive a detailed brief, following which it will create the concepts. It has not yet been appointed to develop detailed design proposals for the retail areas of the terminal, which are scheduled for completion in 2003.

‘If we do a good enough job in the first phase I would imagine we will be appointed to the next stage, which is the aesthetics of the project,’ says The Design Solution director Robbie Gill.

‘Once we have received our brief, one of the tasks will be to work out what further work should take place at the airport and how to improve it.

‘The existing terminal is not really even a terminal but an old run-down building,’ he adds.

The consultancy will develop concepts for three areas of the terminal. These areas are the departure area, which includes landside and airside retail, the arrivals concourse and a hotel, situated in the basement of the airport terminal.

The consultancy won the work without a pitch. Gill claims to have a close relationship with Speedwing, the consultancy arm of British Airways, which has been working on the Xian project for some time.

Xian airport is about 900km south-west of Beijing. Xian is famous as the home of the terracotta army tourist attraction.