Terminal
The KIX passenger terminal is a single four-storey building designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop (Renzo Piano and Noriaki Okabe) and has a gross floor space of 296,043 square metres (3,186,580 sq ft). It is the longest airport terminal in the world, at a total length of 1.7 km (1.1 mi) from end to end. It has a sophisticated people mover system called the Wing Shuttle, which moves passengers from one end of the pier to the other.
The terminal's roof is shaped like an airfoil. This shape is used to promote air circulation through the building: giant air conditioning ducts blow air upwards at one side of the terminal, circulate the air across the curvature of the ceiling, and collect the air through intakes at the other side. Mobiles are suspended in the ticketing hall to take advantage of the flowing air.
The ticketing hall overlooks the international departures concourse, and the two are separated by a glass partition. During Kansai's early days, visitors were known to throw objects over the partition to friends in the corridor below. The partition was eventually modified to halt this practice.
Read more about this topic: Kansai International Airport
Famous quotes containing the word terminal:
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—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)