Beijing Daxing International Airport by Zaha Hadid Architects
China continues to revolutionize the architecture sector, be it for its eccentricities or its colossal works, it is a paradise for innovative architects and studios.
The impressive Beijing Daxing International Airport, nicknamed "the starfish." Artwork designed by the deceased Zaha hadid and continued by the studio he founded, Zaha Hadid Architects, with the current director, Patrik Schumacher.
The new airport has become an iconic architectural work that represents the new "power" that China has acquired in recent years against other world superpowers.
With more than 700,000 square meters and built in less than five years At a cost of 120 billion yuan ($ 25 billion), the airport is roughly the size of 98 football fields.
Considered the most expensive and technologically advanced terminal in the world. It has become one of the largest airports by surface, aiming to also be the airport with the highest passenger traffic on the planet.
Beijing Daxing International Airport is more than 700,000 m2
Guided by the principles of more traditional Chinese architecture, the spaces are arranged around a central courtyard consisting of four floors with five aircraft docks that radiate directly outwards to give the building the appearance of a starfish from the air. .
The design guides all passengers through the arrival, departure or transfer areas towards its naturally lit center where all services are located; the check-in spaces, the national and international counters or the shopping areas that are distributed among the different floors.
The interior is designed by Level 8 studio (Hong Kong) who planned the interiors as if designing a small town. In addition to duty-free shops and restaurants, it has nurseries, hotels, work areas and various stages for public events.
The structure with radial design allows aircraft to park directly at the airport with minimal distances to the center of the building, providing exceptional flexibility and comfort to passengers.
Radial shape ensures that any gate can be accessed in record time, less than 8 minutes walking. Impressive! We do compare airport controls. If deserved, see also the ingenuity of the studio Zaha Hadid Architects in dealing with flood protection in the Netherlands.
Technology is an important part of the airport with complex systems of home automation, security and robotics to help passengers. In addition, the energy used by the airport is renewable based on photovoltaic solar panels providing a minimum capacity of at least 10MW.
The data and figures that have been handled in its construction are really relevant and ratify both the magnitude of the airport and China's determination to impress the entire world:
- The airport has been built in less than 5 years, reaching an area of 700,000 m2.
- The 52,000-ton steel exoskeleton that covers the airport's six lobbies, what lies below is familiar to many Chinese mega-projects: concrete, at 1.6 million cubic meters.
1.6 Million cubic meters of concrete have been used in the new airport
- 20,000 people were evicted from Daxing villages to make way for construction. And 20 villages will be relocated since the opening of the airport due to noise pollution concerns.
- Its goal is to process 72 million passengers per year and will have four runways by 2025, but there is a longer-term vision of additional runways and there is talk of 200 million passengers.
- The entire airport has 5G access and uses facial recognition technology for check-ins.
- An excellent, highly detailed virtual tour can be seen on the airport's website.
The new airport is one of the largest infrastructure projects launched by the country's President Xi Jinping in an effort to fuel the slowdown in the Chinese economy and place Beijing firmly on the international stage.
In reality, the new airport is just the latest chapter in the story of how China became the concrete superpower in the 21st century. Since 2003, China has poured more cement every two years than the United States in the entire 20th century (See article on how concrete pollutes the planet).
China is already home to the world's largest concrete structure - the Three Gorges Dam across the Yangtze River. China's "new Great Wall" and its hydroelectric power station is the largest in the world in terms of capacity.
Certainly these mega-projects are impressive and enhance China's ability to transform, although undoubtedly there is an environmental cost, which certainly does not benefit anyone.
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