The New Beijing Daxing Airport Blurs the Lines Between Sci-fi and Reality

If you thought spaceships were only in Sci-fi movies, this new Beijing Daxing airport might change your mind. Located in the southern Daxing District in Beijing, the new airport is the capital of China and has gained a lot of public attention over social media.

Expected to operate by October 2019, the new Beijing airport aims at reducing traffic from the congested Beijing Capital International Airport, which is located in the northeastern suburbs of the capital city.

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1. Aerial Photos Reveal Structure of New Beijing Airport Terminal Building by Zaha Hadid Architects

2. Beijing New Airport Terminal Building | Zaha Hadid Architects

Situated on the border between Daxing district and Langfang, a city in Hebei Province, this space-ship like structure spreads over 313,000 square meters. According to Xinhua, the official news agency in China, the terminals will include and hold a capacity of 620,000 flights every year along with up to “100 million passengers and 4 million tonnes of cargo.” Interestingly, this marks the airport as the second largest airport in terms of passenger capacity.

Construction of the futuristic style roof structure has already started since December 2014 while the engineering projects are expected to finish 3 months before the operation tests, the Contractor Beijing Construction Engineering Group stated. The construction materials include 52000 tons of steel while concrete covers 1.6 million cubic meters of concrete.

“The project, which is being built at an estimated cost of 80 billion yuan (12.3 billion US dollars), will be one of the world’s largest airports ” The China Global Television Network (CGTN) reported.

Although the new Beijing airport is not finished yet, renderings and pictures of the futuristic-style Beijing airport have already gone viral on social media pages, especially Twitter.

While most people were quite impressed with the structure and the aerial shots, others have pointed out that these large funds should have been used to support the millions of Chinese people who are under the poverty line.