"Imagine (all five) Heathrow terminals under one roof and then add an extra 17 percent of floor space," said Briton Norman Foster. The famous architect was talking about the third terminal (T3) of Beijing Capital International Airport (BCIA) designed by him.

As one of the most important projects for the Beijing Olympics, T3, which cost 27 billion yuan ($3.8 billion), was put into use on February 29. The building covers 98 hectares of floor space, equivalent to about 170 football pitches. It runs almost 3 km from south to north. The parking tower alone, which occupies 340,000 square meters, is triple the size of the National Stadium.

"It has taken Heathrow 50 years to grow to its present scale. In Beijing, the process should be completed in less than five. Here is society changing by the power of 10," said Foster.

The opening of T3 makes BCIA the only airport in China that has three terminals, double towers and three airport runways. The number of the boarding gates in T3 is double the total number of Terminal 1 and Terminal 2. "The take-off and landing capacity has been upgraded from 1,000 flights per day to between 1,700 and 1,800 flights per day, including large aircraft of the new generation, such as the A380 of Airbus," said Zhang Guobao, Vice Minister of the National Development and Reform Commission.

Passengers can easily lose direction in large airports, but this is less likely in T3. "Because all the steel pipes on the roof are designed in a north-south direction, as long as passengers raise their heads, they will easily be able to tell their direction by the pipes," said Fan Jun from the Beijing Urban Construction Group.

Unavoidably, T3 has also raised some doubts and arguments over its huge cost and size. Zhu Jingyuan, Designer in Chief of BCIA Expansion Project Department, has her own opinion on this issue. In China, one third of flights will take off and land at BCIA, and more than a quarter of the passengers will come and go through BCIA. "The airport is a barometer of economic growth. If we don't build a large enough airport, it will not be able to meet demands in near future, and the extension and reconstruction of the airport will cost even more," said Zhu.

The first terminal of BCIA was built on March 1, 1958. At that time, it occupied more than 10,000 square meters, and could handle 230 passengers per hour at its busiest hours. In 1991, the number of passengers coming and going reached 8.7 million. The single terminal was unable to deal with this number so Terminal 2 was designed and put into use in November 1999. After just three years, it was unable again to meet the demands of rising passenger numbers.

According to estimations by the civil aviation authorities of China, the annual number of passengers coming and going through BCIA will reach 60 million in 2015 and the volume of freight handled will reach 1.8 million tons. "During the Olympic Games in August, the volume of passengers will reach 5.56 million. The figure is very close to the estimated flow in busiest months in 2015, and the new terminal can totally meet the demand," said Li Jiaxiang, Director of China Civil Aviation Administration.

The increased capacity will consolidate the status of BCIA as the world's eighth biggest airport, and it is expected to become one of the five biggest airports in the world.

Dragon-like

From the sky, the shape of T3 is like a dragon lying in the northeast of Beijing.
Dragon is the totem of China, a symbol of strength and good fortune. The whole terminal can be divided into five parts.

The "dragon head" is the traffic center and parking tower, which has 7,000 parking lots.

The "dragon body" refers to three functional areas: C, D, E. Area C houses passenger check-in, luggage claim and domestic boarding. D area is reserved temporally for flights during the Olympics and Paralympics. Area E is the international airport lounge.

There are no obstacles blocking vision between the functional areas and the external walls are all transparent glass. Stepping into the check-in hall, passengers will feel like they are standing under the sky with changing clouds overhead.

The terminal is designed so that passengers will not feel tired even after walking a long distance, because they walk downward all the way, and in the opposite direction can be carried by escalators or battery-driven cars.

Apart from 450 escalators, elevators, automatic trails and battery-driven cars, a kind of small train-automatic people mover has been introduced in T3 that passengers can use free of charge.

There are several hundred triangle-shaped skylights open in the roof to collect natural sunlight. They look like the scales of a dragon. The designers have given full consideration to the climate of Beijing: cold winter, hot summer, with a short spring and autumn. The skylights open toward the southeast allowing sunlight in the winter to flow into the terminal and be absorbed to the largest degree, while in summer they can keep the building cooler as well as providing natural sunlight.

Compared with other domestic terminals that mostly look heavy and thick, the roof of T3 looks simple. The pipe-shaped steel structure props up a "clear sky" that is 30 meters high. There are no complicated pipes, such as the air supply channels of air conditioners, or telecommunications equipment, which is hidden in the ceilings in the other terminals. Zhu revealed the position of the pipes pointing to square-shaped boxes. "The pipes are in these boxes, the pillars supporting the roof are empty inside for holding the pipes," he said.
The traffic web that extends to all directions is like the dragon's whiskers. The subsidiary traffic project of the T3 construction includes three highways and a subway.

Apart from driving cars, or taking taxis and buses, there will be a new subway line built connecting the airport to the city. The subway from Dongzhimen to the airport will be put into use in July. From Dongzhimen to the airport will take around 10 minutes.

There is an underground maze in the new terminal: the largest and fastest luggage handling system of the world, which cost 2 billion yuan ($281 million) to create. Its top speed is 12 meters per second, even faster than Liu Xiang, China's champion in the 110-meter hurdle race at the last Olympics. It can deal with almost 20,000 pieces of luggage every hour. The length of its channel is nearly 70 km.

It is ‘very China'

"At first sight of the terminal, you can tell it is China," said Norman Foster.

T3 is dotted with traditional Chinese elements and symbols that represent good luck for the Chinese people. All these are connected with modern technology. For example, the color of the steel structure on the roof changes gradually from bright red to golden yellow. The red color represents enthusiasm and happiness, and the color of golden yellow is the main color of the Forbidden City, representing dignity and wealth. "My inspiration comes from China's ship building and color planning," revealed Foster.

The bold usage of bright colors makes T3 different from other airports. It says in a more enthusiastic way to people: welcome to Beijing.

There are 10 cultural scenic spots designed in T3, the inspiration for which comes from traditional Chinese construction and ancient gardens. The spots provide some quiet places for passengers to take a rest and make it much easier for people to identify a meeting place. There are also hundreds of groceries and restaurants in the new terminal.
T3 makes use of an environmental control system to decrease energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions.

In the busy hours of the day, T3 will operate a light sensor control system. When natural light is sufficient, the terminal's lights will shut off automatically. At night, when there are not many passengers, the lights will operate by mobile sensors. In this way, T3 is expected to save around 1.6 million kw of power every year.