Flying high on culture
The recent Indigo crisis has brought the spotlight on many of India’s airport facilities and new ones in the making that are better equipped to handle disruptions, passenger comfort, essential on-site amenities, command and communications centre and mobilisation of resources. Privately owned and operated facilities are burgeoning as an imaginative, creative and progressively efficient vanguard of raising the bar on consumer expectations.
India is demonstrating a demand-driven impetus in addressing the burgeoning air-travel sector with accelerated design and development of state-of-the-art airports across the country that are both functional exemplars and cultural canvases of the future. With 35 international airports, India has about 432 domestic airports, airstrips, heliports and aerodromes, employing over 7.7 million people in aviation and allied sectors. Just in the last decade, the number of airports has doubled from 74 to 148. The number of domestic air passengers has also more than doubled since 2014, from 60 million to 145 million. There is also a noticeable shift in purpose-driven travel with increasing numbers of vacationers, explorers, leisure and pleasure seekers spurred by the conveniences of digi-yatra, greenfield airports policy and competitive pricing, as opposed to largely business and or emergency travellers.
Apart from offering space for advertising, shopping and dining, many airports are transforming themselves as cultural hubs with collections, exhibitions, displays, live music and art programme partnerships, showcasing regional and national arts and crafts. From random interventions of cheap art and crude hand-painted signage, airports have come a long way in India, incorporating well-thought-out visual vocabulary, digital signs and billboards to wall and ceiling mounted scenic treatments that reflect local culture, regional geography and icons in addition to regional tourism destinations and attractions.
The fully solar-powered Kochi International Airport has, for instance, large murals, vignettes and dioramas of kathakali dancers, masks, flying kalari warriors and an impressive line-up of full-scale caparisoned elephants with resplendent umbrellas. The Indira Gandhi International Airport, Delhi, sports a massive 240-metre-long copper-and-bronze discs of mudra murals, with 2.75 metre tall hand gestures symbolising abhaya, varada, prana, bhava, et al, drawing on the spiritual practices prevalent across the sub-continent. Hyderabad’s Rajiv Gandhi International Airport has diverse works of Indian art with installations of Tholu Bommalata of the Telangana tradition to works of artists like Thota Vaikuntam, which adds to the vibrant ambience of this busy airport.
In Mumbai, Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport’s Terminal II features ‘The Artbeat of New India’ – one of the world’s largest public art programmes, stretching across 3.2 km corridor, with over 5,500 artefacts. The stunning new Jewar Airport in Noida, designed by Haptic Architects, has incredible design elements woven into the fabric of architecture that draw on India’s rich heritage and living traditions. This net-zero airport blends Swiss efficiency with Indian hospitality replete with Ghts-inspired steps and traditional stone jaalis (lattice).
The Thiruchirapallil International Airport draws on Nagara architectural forms from the Srirangam temple and harnesses natural light. The recently operational Maharshi Valmiki International Airport’s concourse in Ayodhya holds 14 massive kalamkari style 21 ft tall paintings, embedded on a 360 ft long wall, depicting the life of Lord Ram, while the security displays a huge patachitra-style mural on the devotion of Hanuman.
Many of these airports are seeing a cross-pollination of artistic influences from across the nation with a congruence of styles, strokes and scenic elements enriching the visual tapestry for the traveller. From being a mere afterthought post-construction, design elements and works of art are redefining the basics of airport architecture, exterior landscape and interior design as essential distinguishing features vital to the project. Indian artists and artisans are lending their aesthetic acumen to airports in the Maldives, the Congo and elsewhere.
With commercial operations slated to take off in December 2025, the massive Navi Mumbai International Airport commences Operational Readiness and Airport Transfer (ORAT), marking an incredible milestone in its fast-paced complex manifestation. Unlike the Mumbai airport craft curated experience, this new airport, designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, will be a mesmerising envelope of digital art with futuristic elements of projection mapping, interactivity and immersive content created by a Germany-based firm working collaboratively with the Adani team.
Against the backdrop of jumbo jets and jaw-dropping interiors, design has become the DNA and cultural arts, the lingua franca of the flying experience on the ground!
The author is an India-born, world-renowned Canadian museum director, designer and author of seminal books on the future of museum practice and destination development