Are these the world’s most beautiful airports?

Around the world modern airports are variations on a glass-and-steel theme, usually with lots of white everywhere. Rising nations tend to pour money into erecting extravagant things. As countries in Asia and the Middle East grew in economic power over the past quarter-century, they signalled their new importance by building monumental terminals.

Qatar, long determined to punch above its geopolitical weight, opened Hamad International in 2014. Under Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has overseen a building boom, Turkey inaugurated an airport in Istanbul, one of the largest in the world, in 2018. China’s Beijing Daxing (pictured, below), finished the following year, is all soaring arches, luscious curves and soft edges. Sleek, modern and ambitious, the airports proclaim themselves and their countries as the future.

Not in India. Bangalore’s Terminal 2 (pictured, below), which opened in 2023, was designed as a “terminal in a garden", a nod to the verdant metropolis’s reputation as a “garden city". It is different from anything in China or the Middle East. As a statement, its vision is less sci-fi spaceship than prelapsarian arcadia. Earthy tones dominate the colour palette. There are splashes of green where the ample foliage emerges from gigantic hanging planters. Beams are covered in bamboo, giving the impression that the whole thing is made of organic materials.

Renewing the past

Bill Drexel, an American think-tanker who recently visited India, recalls being “blown away immediately" by Bangalore’s new terminal. That, he adds, “was particularly remarkable because I arrived in the wee hours…and would have much rather been asleep". Tanner Greer, an analyst who took part in the same trip, wrote that “Aesthetically, Indian futurism is very pleasant. It fares well in contrast to Chinese futurism, which is raw and ugly."

The first major new terminals to open in India’s modern airport-building boom aspired to be like those Chinese ones. Airports in Bangalore and Hyderabad (pictured, below), opened in 2008, are standard-issue glass-and-steel. Delhi’s shiny Terminal 3, opened in 2010, has a similar aesthetic, distinguished only by its infamously ugly carpet.

Mumbai’s Terminal 2 (pictured, top), completed in 2014, marked a turning-point. The predominant material is concrete. Its reigning motif is the feather of a peacock, India’s national bird. The motif is visible in the detailing of the huge columns that hold up the roof, in the light fixtures, even in the signage. GVK, the conglomerate that commissioned the terminal, wanted to ensure that when someone arrives at the airport they will instantly know they are in India, says Derek Moore of SOM, the American firm that designed it. Bangalore’s second terminal, also by SOM, followed suit. For Mr Moore, the two projects were “the high points of my career".

Goa’s second airport, opened in 2023, is another example. Its interior is embellished with the façades of Portuguese-inflected homes found in the state. Cheerful bunting is everywhere. A second airport for Mumbai, scheduled to start operations in May, uses as its motif the lotus, India’s national flower. Designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, a British firm, it, too, is guaranteed to be distinctive.

The design of India’s airports reveals deeper truths about the country, among them a willingness to allocate money to beauty, or at least decoration. Across India, even the most mundane underpasses and bridges are covered in bright murals of tribal art, local landmarks or abstract designs. In Mumbai pillars holding up the metro rail now being built have already been festooned with patterns. Not all of it is attractive, but it is never boring.

Prettying up infrastructure raises costs, although not by much. Mr Moore reckons that the aesthetically pleasing extras are unlikely to have added more than 1-2% to the overall cost of Mumbai’s or Bangalore’s terminals, compared with an unornamented design. Yet 1% is not nothing in what remains an extremely cost-conscious country. Government authorities and private firms believe the expense is worth it.

It’s what’s on the inside that counts

A second insight is that India is unwilling to forsake its history and traditions in pursuit of modernity. GVK’s vision for Mumbai’s Terminal 2 (pictured, below), says Mr Moore, was that it “needed to embody the heritage of India" while also being contemporary. The firm’s designers were taken on a tour of historical sites to serve as inspiration. China’s attitude, says Mr Drexel, who has spent time in both countries, is “we want to be at the top for looking more modern than anybody", whereas India’s is “we want to be ourselves, we want to be congruent with the traditions of our national culture."

Lastly, India’s airports exemplify the power of privatisation. Until the turn of the century the state operated every airport in India, and most were awful. Massive amounts of investment poured in after each privatisation. But the job is incomplete. State-run airports and other public buildings—new railway and metro stations, especially—are an eyesore. No less important is the quality of construction. “A lot of stuff coming up is awful: poorly designed, poorly detailed and poorly constructed," says Bimal Patel, an architect and urban planner.

Government projects are afflicted by many ills, including poorly designed contracts, inflexible requirements and corruption. Corners are cut. Last year three airport canopies collapsed in heavy rains (including one at the privately run Delhi airport). New highways and bridges quickly develop cracks or potholes. The joins in flyovers are inexact, making for bumpy rides. In 2022 researchers at the IMF published a paper that looked at average speeds between big cities in 162 countries as a proxy for the quality of infrastructure. Despite building tens of thousands of highways in the previous two decades, India ranked 127th, just ahead of Somalia. Quantity is a poor substitute for quality.

Nor can gorgeous new terminals and their world-class operators banish the ghosts of the old, inefficient India that haunts travellers. Security officers hand-wand every passenger and physically inspect seemingly every third bag. Immigration officers insist on hard-copy paperwork. At customs, passengers must load bags into x-ray machines—as they exit airports. Many new airports have no public-transport links. All these functions are handled by the state. Indian airports are designed to evoke the country’s past. But not everything is worth preserving.

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