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Tegel Airport ATC Tower

I <3 TXL



The Flughafen Tegel (TXL) Air Traffic Control tower and hexagon-shaped Terminal A were designed and built during the Cold War, by architects Gerkan, Marg und Partner, between 1969 and 1974. Still operating in 2019, these facilities provide Berliners with a simple connection to the world via what still feels like a "neighborhood" airport. Personally, I love the pure oddness of the brutalist design. In recreating the tower, I learned that it is based on an equilateral triangle, but the symmetry is broken so that the side facing the runways is wider than the other two sides. Makes sense, right? After all, the controlllers will primarily be looking through those windows, so of course they should be bigger. The idea of "function over form" taken to such an extreme that the form becomes an iconic style of its own.

Like many places in Berlin, Tegel Airport offers a nostalgic glimpse into the past. I would love to see it protected and I hope Tegel remains functional long after the snafu with BER/SXF is resolved. It's too bad that grandiose plans and other priorities have caused Tegel to be neglected. In my opinion, they should tear down the cheap and ugly rectangular Terminal C (the east wing) and build another hexagonal terminal as was originally intended by the architects.

If you fly out of TXL, consider spending 3 EUR to go up on the roof for some open-air planespotting!


Main model
Scale: 1:1 (47.5m tall)
Plot: 4x4
TRIS: 1,160
maps: 1024x1024 (diffuse, alpha, specular, illumination)

custom LOD
TRIS: 176
maps: 128x128 (_d, _s, _i)