Here Come The Warm Jets

The new gatekeepers of the award-winning second terminal at Mactan-Cebu airport have subverted the steel-clad norm by utilising nautical motifs, handcrafted tiles and plentiful wood

- Gerard De La Cruz

Kenneth Cobonpue has long been familiar with the flying options out of Cebu. In fact, the old Mactan-Cebu International Airport was a portal to adventure for the renowned designer well before he was creating bespoke furniture for the likes of Barack Obama, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

“I remember, as a kid, sitting on handmade hardwood benches with carvings,” Cobonpue says of the old terminal, which was formerly a US airbase before it was commandeered for public air travel back in 1966. “It was quite dark, but it was like walking into an old Filipino home.”

With his involvement in the award-winning new second terminal at the airport – the second-busiest in the Philippines after Manila – the Cebuano has come full circle.

Cobonpue, along with Hong Kong architecture firm Integrated Design Associates Ltd. (IDA) and Filipino design powerhouse BUDJI+ROYAL Architecture+Design, pooled their visions for the airport’s second terminal—the Philippines’ first airport-centric public-private partnership (PPP) agreement.

The much-anticipated PHP17.5-billion (USD340 million) project opened in July 2018 and, four months later, won the CAPA Aviation Award for Asia Pacific Airport of the Year.

The design luminaries constellated at the prodding of GMR Megawide Cebu Airport Corporation (GMCAC), which won the concession to run the airport in December 2013. The consortium, composed of Filipino general contractor Megawide Construction Corporation and Bangalore-based infrastructure developer GMR Group, bid PHP33 billion for the contract to Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) the terminals over a 25-year period ending 2039.