The World’s Newest Airport: Beijing’s Starfish

Stunning.

A bit dark inside but very unique. Actually, it looks like a Maple Leaf to me!

One thing that YVR does better than any airport outside of Singapore is creating physical native environments with plants, art and animals to really give visitors a sense of place. I love walking through the BC shore diorama when coming from US flights or the giant aquarium/nature stream in the food fair in the west side of the building.

Unfortunately, I find that overall, the superstructure of the international terminal to be a bit overcomplicated. The white steel beams (meant to look like trees) seem to only clutter up the space rather than make it look interesting. I heard that the original design was to feature a wood veneer over the steel trees, but that was deemed too expensive.

Instead of adding on, I think YVR needs to create a new integrated terminal complex to the west of the current airport site. SeaTac is slowly starting to poach airlines away from Vancouver as it modifies its infrastructure. The Sea Island site has the ability to expand, while SeaTac is essentially built out. Seattle will undoubtedly look to building a new airport somewhere in King County… There is time to keep YVR as one of the major NA west coast gateways to Asia.

I just can’t stop thinking of all those tons of carbon emissions….

Last summer when flying Sichuan Air to Chengdu we cleared customs at Zhengzhou Airport.
Also a giant, stunning brand new air terminal, but as far we could tell absolutely empty and unused.