Plans to expand King Salman International into “one of the world’s largest airports” have been announced in Saudi Arabia…

Plans to expand King Salman International into “one of the world’s largest airports” have been announced in Saudi Arabia. Designed by a multidisciplinary team led by @fosterandpartners, the airport is expected to cover an area of approximately 57-square-kilometres, with space for six parallel runways and several terminals. It aims to accommodate up to 100 million travellers by 2030.

The airport masterplan includes 12-square-kilometres of residential and recreational facilities, retail outlets, airport support facilities and other logistics real estate. It is linked together by the Wadi Loop, a green infrastructure corridor that builds up the existing wadi and joins the existing west midfield to the new east midfield.

Commenting on the news, Luke Fox, Head of Studio at Foster + Partners, said: “We are delighted to begin working on the next stage of the new King Salman International Airport – a truly innovative approach to airport design that reinvents the passenger experience at every level and creates a unique airport metropolis that is steeped in Riyadh’s culture.”

The expanded plans for King Salman International are the latest in a tranche of ambitious construction projects to be announced by Saudi Arabia. Many schemes form part of NEOM, a mega-development led by the state-created Public Investment Fund (PIF), a sovereign wealth fund tasked with diversifying the country’s economy away from oil.

Saudi Arabia’s construction plans are not without controversy. Human rights groups have repeatedly expressed concerns in relation to the country’s past labour practices and more recently forced evictions around some NEOM sites.

📷 Foster + Partners

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