Hanging Gardens

Bengaluru, Karnataka · architecture

The hanging plant chandeliers and woven bamboo ceiling of Bengaluru's T2 terminal — an airport designed as a garden, not a corridor.

Kempegowda International's Terminal 2 in Bengaluru opened in 2022 and was immediately recognised as one of the most beautiful airport buildings in the world. The design brief was 'a terminal in a garden,' and what that produced is unlike any other airport I've flown through — bamboo-lattice ceilings, woven planter chandeliers dropping from the rafters, and so many living plants that the air smells faintly green even at three in the morning.

I shot this from the departures concourse, looking up. The plants are real. The chandeliers hang from the timber grid that runs the length of the building, each one a tiered cage spilling foliage. Behind it all, the flight information board ticks over in its quiet, indifferent way — the only piece of straightforward airport visible from this angle. There's something genuinely thoughtful about the place. It treats the act of catching a flight as a moment worth dignifying. I wish more terminals did.

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