Sneak Peek: You Can Now Explore Beijing's Stunning Daxing Airport With This Virtual Tour
Tickets for the new Daxing Airport are already on sale, and now you can also get a sneak peek of the star-shaped terminal building before it officially opens on Sep 30.
A new digital tour courtesy of CGTN gives the best preview yet of what it may feel like to step inside the massive 700,000sqm airport, using an online 360° imaging of the building’s key areas.
This ambitious new city landmark is the first airport by Zaha Hadid Architects, who chose the eye-catching five-pronged design to minimize the distance that passengers will need to travel between terminals. Other elements nod towards aspects of Chinese culture, including five outdoor gardens (one for each of the main wings of the star), evoking key components in China's history such as the Silk Road, tea culture, and china porcelain. Passengers are free to wait for their flights in the gardens, but as the images from this virtual walk-through suggest, they aren't likely to be feeling terribly cramped inside either.
The tour lets visitors explore the domestic and international terminals as well as the rail hub platforms that connect the airport to the ground traffic network. Even though it’s just a series of images stitched together, the experience gives the viewer a realistic sense of what it will feel like in the mind-bogglingly wide spaces and under the high ceilings of the largest passenger terminal in the world, although we're sure the real thing will have more bustling travelers and fewer construction workers.
Beginning with a view from the fourth-floor international terminal, visitors click their way downwards to explore seven different scenes. An all-around view of the second-floor atrium gives a striking look at one of the airport’s signature C-shaped columns, which give the impression of the ceiling defying gravity and flowing upwards out of the floor, while skylights inside provide natural lighting. The first-floor passenger lounge, meanwhile, shows off the sleek and curved support beams that protect the terminal from seismic shifts in case of an earthquake.
Besides the 360° images, the site has several videos featuring animated tours and also provides visualized data for things like flight maps and how traffic will be shared with Beijing Capital International Airport, which has been struggling to expand capacity to meet demand despite its own expansions.
Flights from Daxing Airport begin Sep 30 and will send passengers to four continents as well as domestically around China. By 2025, 72 million passengers are expected to pass through the new airport annually via its four runways, which will later be increased to six, eventually accommodating 100 million passengers per year.
From what we've seen so far, it's truly shaping up to be Hadid's "last great design."
Images: CGTN
