Mumbai Airport's New Terminal - Terminal T2 (Starts Operations on 15th February 2014)
Mumbai’s fliers
have a cause to rejoice in their international airport’s new terminal,
T2, which was inaugurated by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last week.
The upgraded terminal, which will be thrown open to the public on
February 12, cost Rs 55 billion and will handle 40 million passengers per year, up from the current 10 million.
Approach the departure gates and you are greeted by giant pillars, engraved with the peacock feather motif, extending towards the roof and increasing in size. Some 30 of these massive pillars hold up the terminal’s 11-acre roof which has 30,000 sq ft of skylight that supply ample natural light inside.
Chicago-based architects Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, were in fact inspired by India’s national bird in designing T2. Little wonder, the new terminal has already been dubbed the new Peacock Throne.
Immediately after the immigration area is the duty-free shopping zone and eateries. The duty-free space seems somewhat smaller in size compared to the current airport but the accessibility is almost immediate, you just cannot miss it.
Immediately after the duty-free area is the retail shopping area, spread over 226,000 square feet. And when you are hungry after all that shopping, you can sate yourself at the Pizza Hut, Domino’s, KFC and other outlets.
Pass the shopping area, and just before you head to either the lounge or your departure gate you will come across a large wall which is more like a huge art facility, showcasing art from every region of India.
Titled ‘Jaya He’, the art walk is spread over 80,000 square feet, can be seen from all four levels, and features works done by Indian artists as well as some foreign ones. The execution of the ambitious project was given to the Asian Heritage Foundation, and most of the work has been done in time for the public inauguration a month away.
At 3.2 km long, it is billed as the world’s largest public art exposition, and features around 7000 works.
It’s not all traditional stuff, though, at the art wall. Among the pieces that caught my eye was an artwork by multimedia artist Akshay Rajpurkar, titled Mumbai Google Map. Created using recycled material like computer circuit boards, it is a map of Mumbai with resisters and condensors shaped as buildings. There was another artwork made of bottle caps.
When the whole thing is ready, visitors can know about each artwork by pointing their cellphones at the signature on it and see all the data about it, like its history, theme etc. However, this Complex Asset Resource Management or CARM is not yet ready.
One of the art
installations is interactive, and is part of the Panch Mahabhuta series.
The idea of film director Shekhar Kapur, it was designed by the Asian
Heritage Foundation’s chairman Rajeev Sethi, and is a collaboration
among artist Ashish Tyagi, BR Pandit, Vipul Kumar, Priya Sundaravalli
and KJ Singh. If you’ve been to New York, you will find it somewhat
similar to the ones in the subways, where you place your hand over an
air vent and it makes a sound. Here you place your hand over the flow of
water and it creates a sound, each of the flows producing a different
note. So you make music as you play with the flow of water.
GVK, which started work on the upgrade only in 2011, had to battle encroachments on the land as well space constraints in land-locked Mumbai. Hence the four-level structure, as like in the rest of the city it is easier to go vertical.
In the present scheme of things level 4 is for international departures, while level 3 is for domestic passengers. Level 2 is for arrivals, and level 1 is the exit area.
Approach the departure gates and you are greeted by giant pillars, engraved with the peacock feather motif, extending towards the roof and increasing in size. Some 30 of these massive pillars hold up the terminal’s 11-acre roof which has 30,000 sq ft of skylight that supply ample natural light inside.
Chicago-based architects Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, were in fact inspired by India’s national bird in designing T2. Little wonder, the new terminal has already been dubbed the new Peacock Throne.
Immediately after the immigration area is the duty-free shopping zone and eateries. The duty-free space seems somewhat smaller in size compared to the current airport but the accessibility is almost immediate, you just cannot miss it.
Immediately after the duty-free area is the retail shopping area, spread over 226,000 square feet. And when you are hungry after all that shopping, you can sate yourself at the Pizza Hut, Domino’s, KFC and other outlets.
Pass the shopping area, and just before you head to either the lounge or your departure gate you will come across a large wall which is more like a huge art facility, showcasing art from every region of India.
Titled ‘Jaya He’, the art walk is spread over 80,000 square feet, can be seen from all four levels, and features works done by Indian artists as well as some foreign ones. The execution of the ambitious project was given to the Asian Heritage Foundation, and most of the work has been done in time for the public inauguration a month away.
At 3.2 km long, it is billed as the world’s largest public art exposition, and features around 7000 works.
It’s not all traditional stuff, though, at the art wall. Among the pieces that caught my eye was an artwork by multimedia artist Akshay Rajpurkar, titled Mumbai Google Map. Created using recycled material like computer circuit boards, it is a map of Mumbai with resisters and condensors shaped as buildings. There was another artwork made of bottle caps.
When the whole thing is ready, visitors can know about each artwork by pointing their cellphones at the signature on it and see all the data about it, like its history, theme etc. However, this Complex Asset Resource Management or CARM is not yet ready.
One of the art
installations is interactive, and is part of the Panch Mahabhuta series.
The idea of film director Shekhar Kapur, it was designed by the Asian
Heritage Foundation’s chairman Rajeev Sethi, and is a collaboration
among artist Ashish Tyagi, BR Pandit, Vipul Kumar, Priya Sundaravalli
and KJ Singh. If you’ve been to New York, you will find it somewhat
similar to the ones in the subways, where you place your hand over an
air vent and it makes a sound. Here you place your hand over the flow of
water and it creates a sound, each of the flows producing a different
note. So you make music as you play with the flow of water.
GVK, which started work on the upgrade only in 2011, had to battle encroachments on the land as well space constraints in land-locked Mumbai. Hence the four-level structure, as like in the rest of the city it is easier to go vertical.
In the present scheme of things level 4 is for international departures, while level 3 is for domestic passengers. Level 2 is for arrivals, and level 1 is the exit area.
