The next concert you go to might take place in an airport

The RCF Arena Reggio Emilia is an open-air concert hall that can accommodate up to 100,000 people. Photo: AFP

Airports are simply places of passage for thousands of travellers who go there every day. But some, like the Reggio Emilia Airport, not far from the Italian cities of Parma and Bologna, are getting a facelift allowing them to be transformed into entertainment venues.

At the root of this metamorphosis was a simple observation: like most airports in the world, the one in Reggio Emilia has a huge surface area. For a long time, part of this area of several hundred hectares was an unused buffer zone, separating planes from passengers. But this is no longer the case.

This space is now a huge open-air concert hall – the largest in Europe, as explained in a press release from C.Volo S.p.a., a network of seven companies in charge of the RCF Arena Reggio Emilia. This monumental project has been entrusted to Iotti + Pavarani Architetti, Tassoni & Partners and Studio LSA.

Together, they designed an open-air concert hall that can accommodate up to 100,000 people featuring high-quality acoustics, thanks to a state-of-the-art sound system, and a lawn slope area at 5% for the audience.

Part of the former buffer zone has also been turned into a public park, where visitors can walk or cycle.The airport of Reggio Emilia has hosted, in the past, political rallies and concerts outside the operating hours of the airport.

But these were only occasional events. With the RCF Arena Reggio Emilia, the venue aims to become a major entertainment space, playing host to performances of A-list Italian and international stars.

Pop singer Luciano Ligabue opened the venue in June, with a concert celebrating his 30-year career. It was originally scheduled for September 2020, but it was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Two years later, the RCF Arena Reggio Emilia is ready to get things pumping. Harry Styles is scheduled to perform there in July 2023, as part of his "Love on Tour" world tour.

For architect Paolo Iotti, the RCF Arena Reggio Emilia shows how airports can take advantage of their unused areas.

"Airports, like other large infrastructures or urban voids, often entail the availability of extremely large spaces, proximity to road infrastructure, distance from population centres," he told Fast Company, which gives them "a hybrid and surreal character of uninhabited space but ready to come alive at events".

Many airports around the world are following the example of Reggio Emilia Airport by reinventing some of their empty spaces. One example is the futuristic Trans World Airlines terminal at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York. After sitting unused for 16 years, it was transformed into a luxury design hotel under the leadership of MCR Hotels.

In Berlin, Tempelhof Airport was completely renovated after its closure in 2008. It has since become the largest park in the German capital. Meanwhile, the Barker Hangar at Santa Monica Air Center in California is regularly used for events such as concerts, trade shows, gala dinners and in June the 2022 MTV Movie & TV Awards. – AFP Relaxnews