In September 2014, ADP Ingénierie (ADPI), a wholly-owned Aéroports de Paris subsidiary, won the international competition to design the new Terminal 1 at Beijing’s New Daxing Airport [aka Beijing Capital Second International Airport] and can now reveal some visuals.

 

According to ADPI the centralized single-terminal concept will allow for an ‘enhanced passenger experience’ from the many services which will be provided, including shopping areas.

 

“Passengers can easily find their way within the open interior layout of the terminal, gravitating naturally to the grand skylight central area where shops and services are located, and then walking straight ahead to their gate,” says ADPI.

 

The retail and F&B concessions will no doubt play an important role at the new terminal and will drum up plenty of interest from local and perhaps global travel retailers.

 

As previously reported, with the current concession due to expire later this year, Beijing Capital International Airport is still working on plans for the airport’s new duty free concession period, which is due to start at the beginning of 2016, according to a source.

 

Beijing Airport’s duty free sales are said to have reached RMB.3.8bn ($630m) through Sunrise Duty Free, which operates duty free shops in Terminals 2 and 3, where 20.7m international passengers (+4.5%) passed through in 2014. [Total departing and arriving passengers at Beijing Airport reached a staggering 86.1m in 2014 – an increase of approximately 2.9% on 2013-Ed].

 

Located at Daxing, 60km south of Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, the new Beijing International Airport will eventually have seven runways and over 100m passengers passing through it per year, making it one of the largest airports in the world.

 

The new terminal, which is said to be will cover 7.5m square feet in surface area and its façade will stretch three miles. Slated to open in late 2018, it will have an annual capacity of 45m passengers that can be expanded to 72m passengers.

 

A second airport for Beijing was proposed in 2008 and by 2012, the existing Beijing Capital International Airport was running at near its full capacity.

 

As the competition winner, ADP Ingénierie has fine tuned the design – which is said to be inspired by Chinese architecture – supported by Zaha Hadid Consortium as part of a mixed team managed by Beijing New Airport Construction Headquarters (BNAH).

 

“Based on its own integrated planning, architecture and engineering resources, ADP Ingénierie offers a sophisticated concept, building on its longstanding experience as an airport operator and lessons learned from the iconic project to develop Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport as well as some of the largest airports in the world,” says ADPI.

 

Underpinning ADP Ingénierie’s concept is the decision to stack the international and domestic levels vertically instead of spreading them out horizontally. This allows for the construction of a compact terminal with a single passenger handling centre serving radial boarding piers.

 

Given the terminal’s compact design, the distance between the terminal centre and the farthest boarding gate is around 650 yards, less than Asian and European terminals with similar capacity.