For as long as it has existed, the plane has been excluded from the city. It is smelly, noisy, dangerous, and demands a vast amount of space to operate. As a result, airports are poorly integrated into population centres, their size and noise leaving them stranded well outside the urban core, poorly connected to wider networks. Years of uncontrolled expansion and changing demand leaves behind a palimpsest of terminals and runways, shaped by the dimensions and movements of aircraft.

But if the aircraft of tomorrow are silent and clean, landing and taking off vertically, the airport typology could become something very different. Technological advances in aeronautics and beyond will allow a compact intermodal hub, integrated into the fabric of the city.

London Victoria offers a perfect opportunity to test such a model, as part of a broader distributed network of urban air terminals. This project analyses enabling technologies and explores the composition and nature of the building itself.