Aviation Architecture

Airports are a gateway to commerce and leisure – and often a flagship of national identity. Both airport owners and users require a blueprint which can be implemented while maintaining operational capacity and one that is, of necessity, future proofed for decades.

With more than 60 years of crafting architectural experiences, Warren and Mahoney has built up a depth of expertise from master planning and strategy, to customer experience, through conceptual and developed design, to interior fit-out and project management. The practice has a thorough understanding of, and vision for, aviation architecture, both at a regional level (through projects at Marlborough and Invercargill airports) and on a national scale in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

While international gateways such as Auckland Airport present an aspirational face to the arriving world, smaller airports have a particular charm. At Blenheim Airport, Warren and Mahoney doubled the size of the waiting area and reconfigured the ticketing area to deal with electronic processing. While the baggage zone was upgraded to a covered space, luggage is still transported by a trolley for passengers to pick up

Led by Heathrow in the late 90s, airports have been re-inventing themselves as ‘destinational’ shopping centres that bisect important transport routes. Designing the customer experience is the starting point of our approach to major transport master planning. By understanding customer flows and behaviours, and mapping the multiple journeys of travellers, we create strategies that maximise their ‘Return on Experience’ which in turn provides airport owners and operators a future-proofed return on their own architectural investment.