Redesigned Cathay Pacific Lounge at Haneda Airport, Featuring Saarinen Womb Chairs from Knoll, Celebrated in Monocle

February 20, 2015

The February 2015 issue of Monocle celebrates the redesigned Cathay Pacific Lounge at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport, praising it as “a comfortable place that offers travelers a proper respite from life on the road” with its Saarinen Womb Chairs and other classic designs.

Cathay Pacific Lounge at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport is "the well-designed airport lounge that makes you pray for a long delay,” writes Fiona Wilson of Monocle. The London-based design firm behind the renovation, Studioilse, aimed to create a space to “restores the necessary humanity to airport design.”

“We wanted to get away from the feeling of a waiting room,”says Toby Smith, Cathay Pacific general manager. “The idea was to make it more of a living room than an airport lounge.”

"Who wouldn’t prefer folkcraft textiles and wood to the usual marble and metal? Travelers will breathe a sigh of relief; finally a lounge that offers more than a functional space to pass time in transit," Wilson concludes.