Relax Inside This Oasis In Kempegowda International Airport Bengaluru

At Kempegowda International Airport Bengaluru in India, Enter Projects Asia builds a rattan wonderland where travelers can shop, dine, and retreat into biophilic bliss.

For the Skidmore, Owings and Merrill–designed Terminal 2 at India’s Kempegowda International Airport Bengaluru, Enter Projects Asia principal Patrick Keane and team used Maya, Grasshopper, and Rhinoceros software to develop the forms and fabrication processes for a nearly 3-acre landscape of five sculptural rattan pavilions.

The layout of the pavilions takes inspiration from the 20th-century garden city movement, upon which Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore) is planned, introducing a meandering informality that’s more like a stroll in a park than a direct point A to point B passenger traversal.

• Five pavilions
• 5 ½ miles of rattan
• 22 months of design + construction
• 85 designers, weavers, welders, and installers led by architect Patrick Keane

“We took the plant-based materials—rattan, reeds, bamboo—found in Southeast Asian wellness retreats to the typically utilitarian, urban space of an airport”

An elevation diagram relates the size of two pavilions to a Boeing 747 and a Concorde.

The eight-month design process included fit tests for the 168 modules comprising the pavilions, their structural supports made of aluminum tubing wrapped with rattan.

At EPA’s factory in Bangkok, the modules were handwoven by Thai craftspeople before being shipped to Bengaluru, where more than two dozen workers would complete the complex installation.

EPA’s rattan pavilions are part of what SOM has dubbed a 4 million-square-foot “terminal in a garden,” with the firm’s cross-laid ceiling of engineered bamboo, and tiered planters, 700-year-old olive trees, and other natural elements by landscape architect Grant Associates that are irrigated with rainwater harvested on-site, all of which has led to LEED Gold certification.

The pavilions house high-end retail, a Wolfgang Puck steakhouse, and lounges, the density of the weaving varying from tight, to conceal back-of-house functions, to open and airy.