China:The new Terminal 3 building at Beijing Capital International Airport will be the biggest airport terminal in the world at nearly one million square metres and will make a spectacular first impression of Beijing for the millions of people descending on the Chinese capital for the Olympic Games in August next year.
Viewed from the air, it looks like a dragon in the middle of the northern Chinese plain, a startling structure of sweeping glass and steel designed by British architect Sir Norman Foster.
A golden roof slopes gently above the glass and steel main structure, and the skylights dotting the top of the building are designed to let natural light into the terminal. They look like the raised scales on a mythical dragon's back.
It's the largest covered structure ever constructed and will have taken less than five years to build when it goes operational for the games.
The building is dotted with traditional Chinese symbols such as red pillars, suggestive of ancient temples, all interwoven with contemporary technology and design and topped off with an aerodynamic roof.
"The airport will give an excellent impression when visitors arrive at the airport," said Zhang Zhizhong, general manager of Capital Airport Holding, the state-run holding company that runs the airport, adding that it was a "very important non-competition venue" which would also illustrate the "advantages of socialism" to the visitor.
Terminal 3 opens for testing in February and has a state-of-the-art €180-million baggage handling system with 60km of conveyor belts that can handle 20,000 pieces of luggage an hour. It has twice as many boarding gates as the old terminals and nearly 300 check-in desks.
There is a light rail terminal which will whisk visitors in just under 15 minutes the 25km distance to Tiananmen Square downtown and the terminal is equipped with the gates and a runway capable of handling the giant double-decker Airbus A380 superjumbo.
The terminal cost 21 billion yuan (€2 billion) and that's just for the building - once you factor in all the support services and other infrastructure, the project cost 35 billion yuan (€3.36 billion), according to the owners. The terminal will allow the airport to handle 60 million passengers annually by 2015, up a quarter on 2006's figure.
The building is the latest airport project for Foster and was built by the British-based engineering group Arup. The Chinese builders were impressed by his commitment to the project.
"Sir Norman Foster was here just three days ago," said Yuan Shuigong, deputy construction manager of the project, as he pointed out at the 10,000sq m lake at the front of the airport. "We had great co-operation with him and he visited every two or three months."
The skylights are oriented towards the southeast to maximise heat from the early morning sun, while the building contains integrated environmental control systems to minimise energy consumption and carbon emissions.
The airport is similar in design in some ways to Foster's Chep Lap Kok airport in Hong Kong, particularly in the descending walkways used to enter the building. The Hong Kong airport regularly wins best airport in the world prizes, and it remains to be seen if Beijing can do likewise; the airport ranked only 62nd last year in an international survey of passenger satisfaction levels.
Mr Zhang said Beijing still trailed Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore when it came to creating a global hub.The focus now would be on improving the quality of service in Chinese airports, which are efficient but not friendly or helpful places.
"We want to use the opportunity of the Olympics not just to improve hardware but to raise service levels at the same time," said Mr Zhang.