The largest and most advanced airport building in the world shall be designed and built in just four years, ready to take in the air traffic increase due to China’s entry into the World Trade Organization and the Olympic Games of 2008 in Beijing. From this moment and until 2015 its capacity will rise to accommodate from 27 to 60 million passengers. The terminal building incorporates sustainable design concepts such as the south-east oriented skylights, which maximize heat gain from the early morning sun, or the integrated environment-control system, that minimizes energy consumption and carbon emissions. To get an idea of its size, if the airport’s dragon-like shape were to be extended along the course of the River Thames, it would take up the whole stretch that goes from Tower Bridge to London Eye, the panoramic ferris wheel located opposite Big Ben.

The airport, which is conceived as the new gateway to China and to Beijing, displays a vital and colorful image, using the traditional colors – red and yellow – stressed by a bold geometry as a means to convey a sense of arrival and a sense of place, and to express the effervescent prosperity of this new world in the making... [+]