At nearly 560,000 square metres, Incheon International Airport‘s 46-gate terminal is South Korea‘s largest building. The US$1.1 billion passenger terminal is situated 50 kilometres from downtown Seoul on a land-bridge created between two islands in the Yellow Sea. In its first year of operation the airport served 27 million passengers and can be expanded to accommodate up to 100 million passengers annually. It is located within a three-and-one-half-hour flying time to 40 cities with a population of over one million people. The airport design generates a feeling of warmth and welcome in the passenger terminal, rejecting the cold, homogenised, high-tech feel common to most modern passenger terminals. The skylights, clerestories and curtainwalls have numerous functions. They save energy, provide sufficient natural light to allow numerous 15-metre-tall Korean pines to flourish indoors, and afford passengers broad views to the airfield and the agrarian landscape beyond.
