Flight of imagination.

In Hong Kong's International Airport the design of Cathay Pacific's airport lounges has transformed the usual image of the type, and created a contemplative sumptuous oasis, in which design lifts the spirit and restores the body.

Cathay Pacific's lounges for first class passengers at Kai Tak, Hong Kong's old airport, were an old-fashioned, club room refuge from cramped conditions. The move into Foster's visionary building at Chek Lap Kok provided the company with the opportunity to consider a more modern alternative, one that would positively encourage people to travel Cathay Pacific. An international competition was held and won by John Pawson. Previously responsible for a series of singular houses, galleries and shops (AR July 1996), the project was for these architects the biggest and most commercial they had tackled.

In some ways, Pawson was a surprising choice. The tenor of his architecture runs counter to the dynamic utilitarian power of Foster's building. Inspired by Japanese traditions, early Mies and Barragan, he conveys opulence through a kind of archaic, essentially static, simplicity. So you would have imagined that his insistence on the integrity of unadorned concrete and stone, on silky planes of wood and the absolute purity of a sheet of brimming water, would have been considered uneconomic and dangerously unfamiliar, at odds with the public taste, assumed by most large bureaucratic companies, for carpets and cushions.

But Cathay had recognized a change in passenger profile. These days many of those who travel expensively are comparatively young, they are design conscious and many more than hitherto are business women.

The first and business class lounges, collectively known as the Wing, occupy a mezzanine floor in the south wing of the passenger terminal. Intended to accommodate about 2000 passengers a day, its extent is enormous when seen on plan - a long rectangle measuring 4000 sq metres and spanning four of the airport's 36m bays. Originally, the mezzanine, which corresponds to Level 7 of the terminal's departure lounge, was to have been a public gallery, so that you could look over people waiting beside the various gates and through the wing's glazed wall to the airport's south apron and to the mountains of Lantau Island. Pawson has treated the outer edge of the wing as a gallery, lining it in business class with a shining 28m long bar. Within the gallery is a logical sequence of different spaces, some enclosed, some open under Foster's floating vaults, so that you have an overall impression of spaciousness, of space and light anchored by the solidity of stone and wood, rather than of sheer size.

Though the two lounges are contiguous, their separation is marked by different entrances and discreetly by a desk at their junction. As a first class passenger, you can walk straight from customs to a quiet glazed entrance. If business class you take the escalator down to level 6 and make your way on travelators past the gates and public seating to the far end of the Wing. Turning left into a granite lined lobby you find a Pawsonian staircase, a monumental granite flight lined down one side by a gulley of light and leading to the stone-lined reception on the floor above. First class passengers can slum it in business but business must keep to quarters. These may lack some of the refinements on the other side but, with the Long Bar and restaurant furnished with communal tables and benches, they are jollier.

The best way of imagining this scheme is as an urban interlude within the larger building, with pavilions disposed either side of a central street running from the first class entrance to the large seating area in business at the far south end. This central spine emphasizes the drama of longitudinal space; and of the vaulted roof, which curving down towards the south becomes a protective wing hovering just above your head.

Pavilions are of two kinds. On entering you notice first the granite clad monoliths, which are used to shape entrances and to define the various seating areas - small corrals equipped variously with club chairs, desks and work stations. These monoliths serve more utilitarian purposes like storage or food preparation. Some entertainingly turn into news racks when you peer into illuminated fissures. The second kind of pavilion has the two restaurants and libraries, one of each in each section, and in first class, five private bathrooms. These rooms are strung out, with interruptions for entrance along the eastern edge of the street. They are serviced from the east side of the building and are screened by a translucent glass wall. Within this, running along the outer edge of each room, is a broad channel of water. Imperceptibly activated by a mechanical pump and softly lit, the water sends ripples of light across the wall. From the inside you see shadows of people passing down the street.

Pawson's vocabulary is always a pleasure. Materials are used with sensual intent as is light. Throughout the Wing, floors, like the monoliths, are of grey granite which contributes to the silvery atmosphere of the terminal and which makes the richness of different Woods all the richer. Stone lined bathrooms, softly lit and lapped by water, are seductive, with bath, shower, sculpted stone basins, and opalescent screens. The libraries and restaurants are small temples of contemplative calm, furnished with tables by Pawson and by modern classics like the beautiful Wegner chair in the first class dining room.

As usual, light is an essential component of design. In the open parts of the Wing you are constantly aware of it changing, whether by day pouring through the glazed wall or glancing down from the roof. Light traces the base of pavilions and seating areas, illuminated around the edges have glowing shoji screens made of laminated glass, shoji paper and fibre-optic light.

It was intriguing to see Pawson's architectural convictions applied on a large scale. Like the writer, Bruce Chatwin, whose flat he designed, Pawson seeks spirituality in material things, expressing by design their essential nature. By reducing architecture to the essentials of light, pure form and material, even opulence can be given a spiritual dimension.

The inevitable compromises entailed in commercial work must cause him anguish. It is hardly possible for example in these circumstances to build a monolith of solid stone, and detailing here has in places been executed less than immaculately. It is a pity that he was not allowed to unify furniture in the seating areas as he had wanted, and some people will be disturbed by the collision of his orthogonal geometries with Foster's complex curves (most will be entertained). None of this should worry us. This must be the most restful, comfortable and aesthetically pleasing airport lounge in the world. We could do with a good many more of them.

Architect

John Pawson

Project architects

John Pawson, Simon Dance, Vishwa Kaushal, Enzo Manola, Alejandro Fernadez, Niall Maxwell, Stephane Orsolini, Chris Masson, Stephen Gilmore, Jonathan Bell, Andre Fu

Executive architect/project management

Denton Corker Marshall, Hong Kong 

Lighting design

Isometrix Lighting + Design

Information technology

Arup Communications

Acoustic engineer

Arup Acoustics

Graphic design

Pentagram Design

Furniture

Hans Wegner furniture from Cale Associates

Photographs

Dennis Gilbert, except nos 8, 10 by Richard Glover, and nos 4, 9 by Nacasa & Partners