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Christian Horn writes:
“Terminal 2E, with an intended capacity of 25,000 people per day, was built between April 2000 and January 2003. It had opened in April 2003 and collapsed just 11 months later. The $900 million terminal had been expected to handle up to 10 million passengers per year by the end of 2004 as part of a plan to turn Paris into Europe's primary air travel hub, ahead of London and Frankfurt.
“The architect, Paul Andreu, an international leader in airport design, conceived the terminal as a long concrete tube with no internal supporting pillars. While visually unusual, Andreu's design depended generally on known engineering concepts and applications.
“But it seems that the complexity of the structure was underestimated during the entire design and construction process. According to investigators speaking at a press conference in February 2005, the design process was insufficiently rigorous for so complex a structure. No detailed, independent analysis was done to check the design models.”
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