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"Long before Santiago Calatrava unveiled his architectural allegory for flight that will become the downtown PATH station, Eero Saarinen gave New York City a symbol that captured the grace and excitement of the jet age by mimicking the shape of a soaring bird. Since its completion in 1962, the TWA Terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport has served as an icon of both modern air travel and modern design. But its daring gull-winged construction—a reinforced concrete sculpture that tested the limits of its material and of what modernism could be—was the source of its distinction as well as downfall. The building’s stand-alone, sinewy form made it difficult to adapt it to the rapidly modernizing airline industry. Larger airplanes, increased passenger flow and automobile traffic, computerized ticketing, handicapped accessibility, and security screening are just a few of the challenges that Terminal 5 (as it’s officially known) could not meet without serious alteration. When the terminal closed in 2001 (in the wake of TWA’s demise in 1999), no other airline stepped up to take over the space."
fabprefab news letter no. 8