A vault that shelters flight, a blade of glass that watches the Sahel sky.
A hangar is not merely a shelter for aircraft.
On the outskirts of N'Djamena, on the apron of an airport facing the desert, Rail 55 signs a private terminal for business aviation: a large hangar able to house two turboprop aircraft and, alongside it, a reception building that functions as a small signature lounge.
The architectural design and site supervision are by Rail 55, with structural engineering by Genius Conseils; the interior design and furnishing carry the signature of Abita Decò, which transforms offices and waiting rooms into representative spaces, amid material globes, raking light and leather.
Two opposing geometries seek each other out. On one side, the hangar's great barrel vault, a continuous metallic surface, almost an inverted wing, conceived for the light of flight and the clear span aircraft require.
On the other, the reception tower: a glass prism that leans backward, an inclined glazed facade that gives the project its very name and carries the desert light inside across four levels.
The study renders tell the idea in its purest state: the vault unrolling like a ribbon of steel and the glazed facade lifting off the ground in a single twist.
In the built work, that tension remains intact: the same silhouette, the same tapering of the shell toward the glazed volume — a mark of design control carried from drawing to site.
Abita Decò dresses the executive office with a large material world map, in tones of earth and aged leather, in dialogue with the exposed metal structure and the porthole window that quotes the language of aviation.
In front, the full-height glazing opens onto the runway: leather armchairs, a knotted rug and a steel desk compose a sober elegance, worthy of a private aviation club.
In the second room, the register shifts: a wall painted in the reds and blacks of fire, a sculptural light fixture suspended like a lacquered cloud, a graphite-toned world map on the far wall.
This is the space where passengers wait for their flight: a room that makes applied art and colour its signature, always with desert light filtering through the shutters.
“Making the technical scale of the hangar coexist with the grace of a lounge: that was the project.”
Rail 55 · Project Management, Turin
The ground-floor plan organises the building into two service strips (reception, offices, workshop and catering) drawn tight around the hangar's great hall, with the two aircraft shown to scale at its centre. Footprint approximately 60.00 × 58.40 m.
A terminal that takes off with the eye.
Rail 55 · Genius Conseils · Abita Decò · N'Djamena
Rail 55 · Project Management