Istanbul Grand Airport | Grimshaw Architects, Haptic Architects, Nordic Office of Architecture

This new airport for the city of Istanbul in Turkey, will replace the existing Ataturk Airport. Once completed, it will be one of the busiest airports in the world. Also, according to the project’s London-based architects Grimshaw, it will have the largest terminal under one roof in the world. The proposed project will come at the cost of €8bn or $8.6bn.

Courtesy of Grimshaw

The project is to be completed in 2018, and it will be delivered in a number of stages. On the opening of the first phase it is expected to serve 90 million passengers per year, while at the competition of it, it will rise to 150 million. It can be compared with the new airport planned by Forster+Partners for Mexico City. Both projects are ambitious and grand in scale. They both claim to sit between the world’s busiest airports upon completion, but the Istanbul Grand Airport will be almost double the floor area, with Terminal 1 just being alone 1,000,000 square meters.

It will initially have three runways, but they will double on the end of the project’s completion. Also, According to Nordic Office, the airport is inspired by Istanbul and what makes it such a great city. A vibrant, large-scale city with thousands of years of history, great architectural opinion, colour, life and emotion. It has also been strongly influenced by transparency, daylight and the traditional architecture of Istanbul, such as the Süleymaniye Mosque. It is a project that knows and addresses its context. It is an airport for Istanbul but also an airport from Istanbul.

It will be located the Black Sea coast, 35km away from the city, but under the masterplan by Arup, it aims on providing an accessible and efficient route making the distance seem minimum.

The airport is going to be integrated with the existing public transport infrastructure, like the rail, metro and bus route systems, through a transportation hub located right on its entrance.

This highly modern and functional gateway for the city of Istanbul will feature a vast ceiling where a vaulted canopy will be comprised with skylights that provide sunlight to the key positions of the airport.