New Haikou Airport

A new airport in Haikou, China, a garden between sky and earth

To face the increasing passenger flow of wealthy Chinese tourists, the city of Haikou launched an architectural competition some years ago to build two additional terminals around the existing one. This proposition is for the third terminal to be built.

How to connect the local chinese identity and the generic nature of airports?

The new terminal is designed in two parts and organized around a huge garden with typical Haikou tropical flora as a link between the landside and airside parts of the building.

The landside part of the airport is designed like a Chinese city with a net of little commercial streets. Once you have passed the security check, you cross the garden on a passageway and arrive in the more quiet airside part, which offers three different atmospheres: shops and restaurants on the mezzanine, quiet boarding areas to enjoy the planes movements, and a third zone opening onto the tropical garden with showrooms, cinemas, spas and a little hotel for transit travelers.