The world's most beautiful airport terminals – in pictures
The beauty and design ingenuity of airport terminals – where travellers spend so much of their time – are celebrated in a new photography book, The Art of the Airport
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Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas airport, Madrid
Originally opened in 1931, this airport now specialises in travel to Latin America, with direct flights to Buenos Aires, Montevideo and Santiago de Chile. Architects Richard Rogers and Antonio Lamela designed the Terminal Four building – which opened in 2006 – with the unifying element being the use of bamboo, to create a sense of calm.Photograph: Roland Halbe/Artur Images
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Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas airport, Madrid
Large windows in the roof allow natural light to enter a terminal that, along with its satellite building 1.5 miles away, covers 760,000 square metres. The two buildings are connected by an underground railway.Photograph: Raul Urbina
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Shenzhen Bao’an international airport, China
The design of Terminal Three at Shenzhen is down to Italian architects Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas, who describe their work as looking like a manta ray, which can be found off the coast of China.Photograph: Leonardo Finotti
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Shenzhen Bao’an international airport, China
The airport welcomes 32.3 million passengers a year, a number made possible by the sweeping design of the third terminal, opened in 2013. It has 63 fixed gates, 15 movable gates and a ceiling that is 79 metres high.Photograph: Leonardo Finotti
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Wellington international airport, New Zealand
Created by Studio Pacific Architecture and Warren & Mahoney, this airport, nicknamed ‘the Rock’, was inspired by the legend of sea monsters Ngake and Whataitai. The exterior has been designed to look like ‘dangerous cliffs’, with elaborate copper plates meant to reflect light like water on stones.Photograph: Patrick Reynolds
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Wellington international airport, New Zealand
High windows focus pools of light into the terminal and there’s an extensive use of wood and, where possible, ramps are used instead of steps and escalators (perhaps sea monsters had trouble with those).Photograph: Patrick Reynolds
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Lleida-Alguaire airport, Lleida, Spain
Conceived and created before the financial crisis of 2008, Lledia, in Catalonia, was designed to handle 400,000 passengers a year; it now welcomes fewer than 40,000 annually. It still offers direct flights to Spanish cities, as well as to the UK and Israel in the summer.Photograph: Óscar Laborda Sanchez
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Lleida-Alguaire airport, Lleida, Spain
The airport’s control tower is 41 metres high and is joined to the terminal building. The front of the terminal is clad with metal plates in shades of olive, green and brown.Photograph: Óscar Laborda Sanchez
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King Abdulaziz international airport, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
While the airport terminal itself is somewhat bland, behind it lies a compelling complex of tent-like structures built to resemble Bedouin dwellings. A total of 210 steel pylons, each 45 metres high, carry the ‘tents’, which are made of white Teflon-coated glass fibre.Photograph: Jay Langlois/Owens Coming/courtesy of SOM
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King Abdulaziz international airport, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
Beneath the airport’s ‘tents’ is an open space of almost 500,000 square metres, designed to accommodate 80,000 passengers at any one time. There is also a souk and a mosque.Photograph: Jay Langlois/Owens Coming/courtesy of SOM
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Marrakech Menara airport, Morocco
An airport developed in the early 2000s to try and cope with increasing tourist numbers, Menara has a curved, concrete roof and large triangular windows painted with Arabic designs. Design partnership E2A of Casablanca and French firm CR have combined to create a beautiful mix of tradition and modern architecture.Photograph: Adam Fowler
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Marrakech Menara airport, Morocco
The terminal’s ceiling is a steel structure clad in aluminium and includes windows that allow for plenty of natural light. The windows also serve another purpose: instead of being made of glass, they are pyramids made of photovoltaic modules – and help to generate power.Photograph: Benjamin Edwards/Flickr
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The Art of the Airport: The World’s Most Beautiful Terminals by Laura Frommberg, Stefan Eiselin and Alexander Gutzmer is published by Frances Lincoln, £25
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