A green welcome in Brussels

Felixx has designed “a green entrance” for Brussels Airport, “providing a warm and green welcome for all travellers” and assisting with the airport’s ambition of being CO2 neutral by 2050.

The Belgian development was built last year, offering 500 square-metres of green space to one of the busiest airports in Europe - under normal pre Covid-19 conditions Brussels Airpot would serve more than 25,000 passengers each day.

The green entrance is designed to help with the airports plan to be CO2 neutral by 2015.

Felixx have turned the Curb, the main entrance plaza to the airport linking the departure hall and parking garages, into a hybrid park and square. After it was targeted in a terrorist attack in 2016, this space became closed to cars and empty, but is now a plaza that unites both sides.

Alternating white and grey stripes form a floor pattern that connects the entrances of the parking garages with those of the hall. Rotated Brussels Airport logos strategically disturb the pattern to demarcate the building entrances. The dark stripes include boxes of lush vegetation, clearly differentiating the planted areas from open walkways.

The development offers 500 square-metres of green space to visitors at one of the busiest airports in Europe.

Custom-designed planters have been made to cater for a wide diversity of foliage, providing them with their ideal growing conditions. This collection of small ecosystems boosts, “the biodiversity within a hard and infrastructural environment.” The planters are crafted as strips of varying lengths and heights, giving visual variety to the square.

The green entrance to the airport is a temporary installation until the Curb and the area around it is redeveloped for the 2040 Brussels Airport Masterplan.

These 100 planter boxes are to be reused and integrated into the final layout of the Brussels Airport Complex. Felixx’s entire project maximises the circular reuse of its elements and their materials, with these planting strips being modular and moveable, and the colour scheme being in line with Brussels Airport’s 2040 Outdoor Space Manual.

The custom-designed planters cater for a wide diversity of foliage.