Nordic and COWI to develop Iceland’s main airport

05.09.2018

Nordic and COWI, together with local partners, have won the framework contract for Isavia’s development of Iceland’s main airport, Keflavik International Airport.

Conceptual design for Keflavik produced alongside the master plan. Illustration: Nordic – Office of Architecture

Nordic – Office of Architecture and COWI have been working on a master plan for Keflavik International Airport since the spring of 2015. The master plan forms the basis for the development, which is meant to ensure that the airport can handle the recent extreme growth in passenger numbers effectively.

Together with the local architecture firms ArkÞing and Teiknistofan Tröð and the Icelandic engineers at EFLA, they have now won a five-year framework contract. The first call-off was for the planning group leader (PGL) role to expand the existing terminal by some 30,000 m2.The framework contract is in two parts, one for the terminal building and the other for various other airport-related buildings. It can be extended further to eight years.

Keflavik Airport was originally built by the US military in the Second World War, and has since played a major role in the development of Iceland as a tourist destination as well as a stopover on flights between Europe and the USA. Today’s terminal building was opened in 1987 and has since seen a fivefold increase in passenger numbers.

The airport is projected to pass 10 million passengers per year by 2020, and a number of enlargements and improvements are planned for the coming years.

“Nordic has many years of experience in airport design and has worked with COWI at both Gardermoen and Flesland; now we are looking forward to continuing the development of Keflavik together with them and with our local partners in Iceland. Isavia is a very exciting and professional client that we are delighted to go on working with in our future assignments,” says Hallgrímur Þór Sigurðsson, a partner in Nordic – Office of Architecture.

“COWI has a significant market position within airports all over the world. We follow developments closely and are in constant contact with innovative technology which gives us the knowledge to create the most efficient airports in the world. It is very rewarding to use our expertise from across the Northern Hemisphere in Iceland,” says Frode Fjeldstad, Project Director, Airports for COWI Norway.

The project group looks forward to helping Isavia to meet the challenges facing the airport via our master plan and the framework contract.

The group comprises:

• Nordic – Office of Architecture
• ArkÞing – architects (Iceland)
• Teiknistofan Tröð – architects (Iceland)
• EFLA – engineering (Iceland)
• COWI