30 December 2009: Glasgow Airport
Over the next two years Glasgow airport will undergo a £25m expansion to improve facilities for passengers and increase traffic access to the site.
The planned developments include work on the airport road system, a new food court, a new runway lighting system and upgrades to the airfield taxiway.
Glasgow airport officially opened on 2 May 1966. The first terminal building, a rectangular block with a distinctive chunky concrete barrel-vaulted roof, was designed by the renowned architect Sir Basil Spence. Originally two long corridors, or piers, extended from the terminal to take passengers to and from their flights. Over the years the building has been altered, largely obscuring the original design.
RCAHMS holds the Sir Basil Spence archive, a unique collection of architectural drawings, sketches, files, photographs, news cuttings, models and personal papers accumulated over Spence’s lifetime. Included in the Archive is the first letter from the Ministry of Aviation from May 1961 offering Spence Glover & Ferguson the job to design the Glasgow terminal. At this time Spence, architect of the nearly-completed Coventry Cathedral, was highly regarded, but had never designed an airport before. The Archive also contains notes that he and Ferguson made while on a whirlwind tour of four European airports during which they compiled their thoughts on how airports worked and how services like luggage conveyor belts and check-in desks might fit into their design. Spence's original designs for the terminal proposed thick, glass-plate zigzag walls on all four sides. It was decided, however, that these would be too expensive and the concept was dropped.
In total, the Sir Basil Spence Archive contains 56 drawings, 67 photographs and three manuscript folders containing correspondence and news cuttings on Glasgow Airport.
