Terminal 3Beijing AirportNorman Foster + Partners2008Jared Subler
Architect.
Terminal 3 is a fourteen million square feet, $3.65 billiondollar complex of three volumes resting upon a twomile long north-south axis. Foster + Partners, with Arupas the engineering arm, designed and built the project,on schedule, in less than four years. Mouzhan Majidi,Foster’s chief executive, comments on the Chinese con-struction industry, “the speed at which they do projectsis ten times faster.” Though the architecture of airport
terminals is not new to Foster + Partners, the rm begandesigning them in the 1980s, they lacked an ofce in Bei
-
jing. Upon receiving the job Foster set up shop in Beijing
in 10 days. The local collaborating architect was the
Beijing Institute of Architectural Design.
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Building.
Terminal 3 was designed for the Beijing Capital Interna
-tion Airport Company, Ltd. The building holds the title ofhaving the largest footprint of any airport, of any build-
ing, in the world. It is the rst building in the world toexceed one million square meters in oor space. The
terminal became fully operational on March 26, 2008.The journey from the check-in to the farthest gate takes15-20 minutes. The building was erected mostly withregional materials. The construction workforce swelledto 50,000 at its peak. The terminal was designed to ac-commodate 50 million passengers, the estimated annualcapacity for the year 2020. Future expansion of the ter-minal was considered in the design. To the right is a viewof the ceiling translucent ceiling grid. The structure ofthe grid emphasizes the longitudinal axis of the building,serving as a circulation guide to the passengers. Also inview are columns, which taper to a larger cross section.Though structural, these columns also aid to a percievedverticality of the space.
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