2024 Fall Issue of Urban Land - 65

INDIA'S AIRPORT
BUILDING
BOOM
Aviation propels growth, innovation,
and global connectivity BENNETT VOYLES
TwenTy years ago, India had only 50 airports
with regularly scheduled service, according
to statistics from the Airports Authority
of India. By 2014, the number had grown
to 74. By 2023, the number had doubled to
148. Sometime in the 2030s, it is expected to
double again.
Even more extraordinary than the number
of airports, however, is their architecture.
Whether one considers the Hindu symbolism
designed into the airport in the pilgrimage city
of Varanasi, up north, or the acres of indoor
and outdoor waterfalls at Kempegowda Terminal
2 in Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore), down
south, India is building airport infrastructure
much more stylish than the anonymous boxes
familiar to most air travelers around the world.
Professor Charanjit Singh Shah, who
designed the Varanasi terminal, says he always
tries to bring local and emotional touches
to his work. For his design of the airport at
Ayodhya, for example, which is revered as the
birthplace of the Hindu god Ram-also called
Rama-Shah tried to integrate references from
Ram's story and, as he explains, " translate
that in terms of motifs, in terms of artwork, in
terms of volumetric analysis, in terms of large
stone-cut works, and my signages. "
All of this airport development has happened
quickly, driven by the country's
relentless economic expansion. Over the
past 20 years, India's GDP has quadrupled to
almost $4 trillion, catapulting it to the fifthlargest
economy in the world, ahead of the
United Kingdom, according to the International
Monetary Fund.
Propelled by that powerful commercial
updraft, air travel has climbed, too, from 15
million domestic travelers and 15 million international
ones in 2004, according to the Centre
for Asia Pacific Aviation, to 152 million domestic
passengers and 64 million international
passengers in 2023, according to Reuters.
But the career of Charanjit Shah offers a
more human measure of just how rapid this
transformation of Indian air travel has been.
Although he has practiced architecture for
54 years and is often referred to in the Indian
architectural press as " the king of Indian airport
design, " Shah actually completed his first
airport in the mid-2000s. Two decades later,
Shah and his team of 300 have completed 50
projects, and made their mark all over India,
not to mention airports as far north as Nepal
and as far west as Romania.
Now with sustainability
Although the interest in distinctly Indian
motifs remains strong in the country's airport
FALL 202 4
URBAN LAND
65
FEATURES

2024 Fall Issue of Urban Land

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