Opened in time for the 2008 Olympics, the vast Terminal 3 (two miles long and one of the largest buildings in the world) is supposed to represent a dragon. Architects Foster + Partners color-coded the ceiling—a dizzyingly complex mesh that allows sunlight to filter in—with red zones and yellow zones. Not only does the traditionally Chinese color scheme heighten the building's drama, it also helps passengers navigate the building.
Beauty Mark: Arriving passengers disembark at the airport's highest level: "You're walking through a massive, massive space which is the gateway to China," says Foster + Partners CEO Mouzhan Majidi.
2. Terminal 4, Barajas Airport, Madrid
Designed by Richard Rogers Partnership, Terminal 4 opened in 2006. Its colorful pylons supporting an undulating bamboo-lined roof create a series of daylight-filled canyons in which both arriving and departing passengers pass through one spectacular space, albeit on different levels. The terminal, designed to handle 35 million passengers a year, is Madrid's bid to become Europe's dominant air-hub.
Beauty Mark: T4 is easy to understand because it's linear. "Rogers puts you inside a rainbow that stretches for half a mile," says architecture critic Paul Goldberger.
3. TWA Terminal, John F. Kennedy Airport, New York City
Granted, you haven't been able to fly out of Eero Saarinen's 1962 landmark terminal in nearly a decade. But its poured-concrete swoops and curves, a lyric poem to the romance of flight, still set the standard for today's leading architects who want to return to—as Saarinen said—architecture that would "express the excitement of air travel."
Beauty Mark: Eventually you'll be able to walk through the old TWA terminal and its 125-foot-long tubular passageways to check into your flight in the adjacent JetBlue terminal.
4. Carrasco International Airport, Montevideo, Uruguay
The new terminal, opened in 2009 and designed by Uruguayan-born architect Rafael Viñoly, is a gorgeous throwback to JFK circa 1960. In spirit, it's like Saarinen's TWA Terminal, but in style, it's more similar to the JFK's international arrivals hall designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. A 1,000-foot-long, low arch, it is as simple as a child's drawing of an airport, one unbroken, graceful curve. Inside, the departures hall is a great, sunlit room, like an old train station, and a top floor terrace commands sweeping views of the runways.
Beauty Mark: Viñoly notes that in Uruguay "friends and family still come to greet you at the airport or see you off." The terraces and lounges are designed to be "dramatic and welcoming" for both ticketed passengers and their guests.
Designed by Richard Rogers Partnership, Terminal 4 opened in 2006. Its colorful pylons supporting an undulating bamboo-lined roof create a series of daylight-filled canyons in which both arriving and departing passengers pass through one spectacular space, albeit on different levels. The terminal, designed to handle 35 million passengers a year, is Madrid's bid to become Europe's dominant air-hub.
Beauty Mark: T4 is easy to understand because it's linear. "Rogers puts you inside a rainbow that stretches for half a mile," says architecture critic Paul Goldberger.
3. TWA Terminal, John F. Kennedy Airport, New York City
Granted, you haven't been able to fly out of Eero Saarinen's 1962 landmark terminal in nearly a decade. But its poured-concrete swoops and curves, a lyric poem to the romance of flight, still set the standard for today's leading architects who want to return to—as Saarinen said—architecture that would "express the excitement of air travel."
Beauty Mark: Eventually you'll be able to walk through the old TWA terminal and its 125-foot-long tubular passageways to check into your flight in the adjacent JetBlue terminal.
4. Carrasco International Airport, Montevideo, Uruguay
The new terminal, opened in 2009 and designed by Uruguayan-born architect Rafael Viñoly, is a gorgeous throwback to JFK circa 1960. In spirit, it's like Saarinen's TWA Terminal, but in style, it's more similar to the JFK's international arrivals hall designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. A 1,000-foot-long, low arch, it is as simple as a child's drawing of an airport, one unbroken, graceful curve. Inside, the departures hall is a great, sunlit room, like an old train station, and a top floor terrace commands sweeping views of the runways.
Beauty Mark: Viñoly notes that in Uruguay "friends and family still come to greet you at the airport or see you off." The terraces and lounges are designed to be "dramatic and welcoming" for both ticketed passengers and their guests.
5. Sondika Airport, Bilbao, Spain
This Santiago Calatrava–designed airport, built in 2000, is nicknamed La Paloma, or the Dove, for its birdlike silhouette. Inside, the terminal is nakedly sculptural, an unadorned study in sunlight and the rhythmic patterns created by its concrete ribs. "It struck me like a contemporary Gaudí kind of place," says Design Within Reach founder Rob Forbes, "fully in keeping with the Spanish/Basque/Catalan tradition of ‘modern baroque.'"
Beauty Mark: Even the parking garage, partially buried in a green hillside, is well thought out and beautiful.
6. Denver International Airport
Denver's airport, routinely voted the best airport in North America by business travelers, is beloved for its billowing roofline. The product of a hasty sketch by Denver-based architect Curtis Fentress, who had three short weeks to cook up a design concept, the airport features a Teflon-coated tensile fabric roof—the world's largest when the airport opened in 1995—and looks like a village of giant white tepees. The airport is at its most beautiful when you approach by air from the east and see the glowing man-made peaks silhouetted against the Rockies.
Beauty Mark: The quirky music that marks the arrival of the airport's people mover was supplied by Denver artist Jim Green, who is also responsible for the Laughing Escalatorsat the Denver Convention Center.
7. Incheon International Airport, South Korea
Since its opening in 2001, Incheon, designed by Denver's Fentress Architects, has been a frequent presence at the number one spot on lists of the world's best airports. Not only is it efficient and welcoming, it is intended to be a showcase of Korean culture. The bow of the roofline emulates a traditional Korean temple, the arrival hallways are lined with 5,000 years of Korean artifacts, and the airport's wildly biomorphic train terminal is one of the few places on earth that still looks genuinely futuristic.
Beauty Mark: Visit the Pine Tree Garden in Millennium Hall and the Wildflower Garden in the basement of the Transportation Center.
8. Marrakech Menara Airport, Morroco
This dramatic new airport terminal is an example of how Modernism and traditional Islamic architecture have begun to cross-pollinate. Designed by a team of architects led by Casablanca-based E2A Architecture and completed in 2008, the structure is formed of massive concrete rhombuses. This muscular approach is softened by the exquisite arabesque patterns on the building's glass skin, which cast complex, ever-changing shadows on the terminal's floors.
Beauty Mark: There are 72 photovoltaic pyramids generating power on the roof.
9. Chek Lap Kok Airport, Hong Kong
Compared with the spectacular Beijing airport, this 1998 Foster + Partners project is relatively humble. Its beauty can be attributed to its extraordinary functionality. Even the sleepiest passenger off the 17-hour flight from New York can maneuver through this airport with eyes half open. Billowy roof vaults work like subliminal arrows, constantly nudging passengers in the right direction. Between the Jetway and the express train to Hong Kong, there are no stairs or escalators.
Beauty Mark: The train to Hong Kong Central is right in the main terminal building and impossible to miss. Departing Hong Kong, passengers can simply drop their bags at the train station downtown, and not only will they make it to the airport, they’ll also be checked onto the departing flight.
10. Tempelhof International Airport, Berlin
As difficult as it is to use the word beautiful to describe anything designed by Nazi architect Albert Speer, this imposing 1936 terminal, an unbroken curve more than a third of a mile in length, determined the shape of airports for generations to come. Made famous by the Berlin Airlift of 1948–1949, the airport was shut down in 2008; the airfield will be used as an immense city park while the terminal will be preserved for cultural functions.
Beauty Mark: In about seven years, this 568-acre green space will eclipse the famous Tiergarten as Berlin's premier park.
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