Mouzhan Majidi0:00
I used to work in London in 1986, and I attended a lecture by Norman at the RIBA in '86. He was talking about his projects. I went back and did my diploma, and then when I finished in July '87, I decided to write a letter to Norman. I came down to Portland Place where we had this incredible office on the ground floor with large sliding doors. It was the only place I wanted to work.
I was so excited I was there the next day for an interview with Norman himself. He interviewed me, we discussed my project, what I had been doing at my diploma. The project was very engaging, and we had a really good conversation around it. At the time I was shortlisted for the RIBA Silver Medal, which boosted my confidence. We spent about half an hour discussing the project, and then he asked me whether I would be willing to start in the practice. I couldn't believe it, so I said I'm available.
Stansted was the opportunity for Norman to reinvent the concept of an airport. Although it's one of our smaller airports, it's absolutely key in the way it re-examined how airports should work and how airports should feel. We turned the whole diagram upside down, putting all the machinery below ground, below the passenger level, and clearing out the space into a very clear passenger experience, with the roof being a very lightweight structure that allows daylight to come through.
Stansted was the first project that created a new diagram for airports. All airports that followed — not just by us but by any architect — have followed the Stansted diagram. We were a team of around 16 to 18 people working on the project. We did the competition for Chep Lap Kok, and we won that competition. I remember Norman coming up to me saying, now that we've won it, you need to go to Hong Kong to do the project. At Chep Lap Kok we took those ideas from Stansted and refined them further, applying them to a much bigger terminal, a super terminal.
Chep Lap Kok has developed into a very, very efficient terminal building. For passenger experience, it's probably one of the best in the world. The experience from arrival at the building, without having to change any levels, we developed a layout where passengers know exactly where they're going. The movement is intuitive — you follow the roof, you follow the direction of the skylights, and you can always see the planes on the outside of the building, so naturally you know where you're going and you don't rely on signage so much.
We held a lot of design reviews with Norman, as a team reviewing everything with him. I was very fortunate that from the start I was engaging with Norman on design reviews and also on full-scale mock-ups that we started to do on site. It's absolutely fantastic — you're always learning something new with Norman. It's also quite daunting going in front of Norman with your design reviews, because you would want to have looked at absolutely everything — all the eventualities, all the options and possibilities that the design task might provide. And he would always see things that perhaps others don't, and he would always give a steer towards a solution. It's just absolutely fantastic experience.
