The Most Beautiful Airport in the World?

The “World's Most Beautiful” Achievements have been granted by the Prix Versailles at UNESCO each year since 2015, aiming to “highlight the primary role of the laureates in beautifying and improving the living environment.” SOM's prize for Terminal 2 at BLR was given last month, alongside two other projects in the airport category, one of eight categories overall for 2023. While the two other airport laureates — Shenzhen Bao’an International Airport, Satellite Concourse, by Aedas, the Prix Versailles winner; and Newark Liberty International Airport, Terminal A, by Grimshaw Architects, recipient of a special prize for an exterior — are clearly aligned with the formal trends of airport architecture in recent years, SOM's design for BLR is a dramatic departure (no pun intended) from the norm, on par with projects like Safdie Architects' Jewel Changi Airport, where natural materials and vegetation create calming environments for anxious travelers.

Fittingly, SOM describes their design as such: “The terminal creates a radically different airport experience for passengers. A new multimodal transit hub — an outdoor space simultaneously serving as a retail and event hub right in front of the terminal — reimagines the role an airport can play in a city. From this transit hub, through the entrance, and extending to the gates, the terminal is both humanist and rooted in nature. Throughout the complex, interior plantings, exterior gardens, and rich natural materials weave the experience of nature into travelers’ journeys. Clad in brick, engineered bamboo, and glass, the complex consists of a set of interconnected buildings tied together by a continuous band of outdoor, landscaped spaces … a ‘terminal in a garden’ that nods to Bengaluru’s reputation as the ‘garden city.’”