The current Kuwait Airport (pictured above) was originally designed by the legendary Japanese architect Kenzo Tange. The British architect and critic Stephen Gardiner wrote in 1985 that this is “the most beautiful airport in the world” because of its “breathtaking simplicity of color and shape.” It is “white sculptured space as cool as an ice-cube, as enormous as a vat intake of pure air, as light as a tent, as canvas hung from cables and sails.”
Below is how the airport looks like today.
Update: If you want to see more pictures of how the airport used to look click [Here]
17 replies on “Kuwait Airport – Before and After”
woow, impressive. Kuwait no longer goes all out with designs and structure. except for Alhamra tower now.
and the new airport. I just hope once the project is done and the designers leave that the airport doesn’t turn into a mess again.
What time of day was this picture taken? Where are all the million sub continent workers with taped color TV boxes? This is not a fair picture today, sorry. Here goes. Simple. Expand immigration by moving the current immigration forward and install EGATE. Connect immigration with forward zones, yes, it can be done. Start closing shops in the airport and build check-in desks. Build zones, and put all the discount carriers in the same zone, put all subcontinent carriers in the same zone, put mid-east carriers in the same zone and all other foreign carriers in the same zone. All Airline offices will be located on the ground floor where currently there are shops, visible for public access. Widen the road in front of the airport. Increase the far parking lot upwards, it is currently one level. As you move the airport forward, possibly you can expand the shopping after immigration and put McDonalds back in the airport passed immigration. Etc Etc ETc It can be overhauled to cater to the present level of passengers, you have to get the majority of the shops out of the airport and make it function as an airport.
i don’t understand how they removed mcdonalds and put chilis instead. before i could get a quick bite before a flight, pancakes in the morning, a burger any other time of day. max wait time is like 2 minutes. Now with chilis you have to wait 15-20minutes to get something!
I know alot of people are really bummed out about it. I know it is in the parking lot but that caters to airport staff not passengers. I do see some minimal changes in the airport, but they are not sufficient and with some common sense alot of improvements could be made whilst the new airport is being built that would cut down the chaos.
what area is that in the pic ? I couldn’t figure out
if you’re leaving a gate and heading towards the duty free section
but then shouldn’t the arrival area be down stairs where the car is ?
No you’ve gone to far. Imagine u landed and are exiting your gate heading towards immigration
Those stairs/elevators are just behind the car.
They totally murdered the design. None of the elements discussed by the british architect are found in the new design. Things like design murder should be illegal.
i like the original design and before all the shops or duty free was there,it reminds me of gulf war.it is just so attractive.
if u want to see more pictures of how the airport looked here is a link https://archnet.org/library/images/thumbnails.jsp?location_id=1980
thank you.
it all looks so… plastic now,
Im glad Kenzo Tange didn’t get a chance to see the way his design got sabotaged.
hi, i researched Kenzo Tange and i didnt find anything about him designing the kuwait airport.
https://archnet.org/library/sites/one-site.jsp?site_id=589