Stansted Airport

Foster's strategy for shopping and catering was to contain these uses, as well as offices and WCs and even a rather claustrophobic chapel, in free-standing cabins, 'buildings within a building' There was also a sizeable fast-food area between the departures concourse and the arrivals baggage hail, with decent modern furniture and a tower of stained glass by Brian Clarke as a landmark for hungry passengers.

The Clarke tower is now 'somewhere in a hangar', the furniture nowhere to be seen. The fast-food area focuses on a branch of Bewley's, fake Edwardian in style with lots of mahogany, brass and tiles. Shops have encroached into the security/passport-control area and have been tacked on to the end of each of the three banks of check-in desks. They include a large unit selling Cadbury's chocolates — decked out in that company's bilious purple livery (familiar from thousands of street-corner shops) —and an amusement arcade of the type which John Gummer's DOE has allowed to spread across the high streets of Britain. When Stansted opened, responsible companies, such as WH Smith, were content to work within the framework of Foster's design strategy. Now the controls seem to have been not so much loosened as abandoned, so that Stansted, one of Britain's best recent buildings and a gateway to this country, seems to be worse managed than an average shopping centre.

Transparency was a key feature of Foster's scheme. From the front of the terminal, it was possible to see right across the interior. Yet BAA has recently relocated the offices of the various car-hire firms immediately behind the clear-glazed front façade, so that you now see the backs of some shoddily designed boxes. The space vacated by the car-hire firms will contain another large shop unit. Go 'airside', beyond the passport checks, and the same process of change can be seen. Duty-free shopping is now under sentence of death from the EU, but 'tax-free' shopping is expanding rapidly, despite evidence that an airport is not necessarily the place for the best bargains. Allders, which operates the duty-free shop and three other airside outlets, says that 43 per cent of passengers visit the shops. Not content with infilling space around the edge of the departure concourse, Stansted's management has made the departing passenger's route into an obstacle course, littered with portable stalls and advertising stands, mostly of tawdry design.

Foster's aim at Stansted was to counter the image of airports as 'discount shopping centres on a grand scale', but he ruffled a few BAA feathers at an inaugural party in the new terminal when he predicted that the lager umbrellas would soon be out. David H Williams, who was project manager for BAA at Stansted, was and is a great admirer of the Foster concept — achieved, as he freely admits, in line with a strict budget. However, he says that the building's shortcomings are now becoming apparent. 'It doesn't adapt to the degree of change we need: he claims. 'For example, we like to have food and drink upstairs, as at Gatwick North, and shops below. The one level doesn't allow for this, and the structural 'trees' would make it difficult to insert a floor.

The idea of an upper level extending across parts of the terminal is shocking to anyone who admires its majestic interior, but it has been considered. Aren't the shortcomings of the building, if they exist, the result of an inadequate brief? 'Don't forget that the brief was being developed in the late 1970s,' Williams responds. 'It was right at the time, but times have changed: Williams eschews the slogans — much talk about 'mission' — which- dominate BAA's corporate thinking, but he insists that 'we are here to make money. . . We have customers, and they want choice — and high-street names.' The message from everyone at BAA is that the growth of retailing is customer-driven. There is a perception that passengers still find Stansted rather wanting in retail provision. More shopping is a certainty.