Bengaluru Airport Terminal 2 Case Study: Garden Terminal, Bamboo and Structure (SOM)

Terminal 2 at Kempegowda International Airport, Bengaluru, was designed by the American firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) for the operator Bangalore International Airport Limited (BIAL), and built by Larsen & Toubro. It was inaugurated on 11 November 2022 and took its first domestic flights on 15 January 2023. The brief was a "terminal in a garden": a steel building wrapped in engineered bamboo, with planters hung from the ceiling and a 90 m wide planted belt between check-in and the gates. Below: the case study, with MOA diagrams.

Bengaluru Airport Terminal 2: the facts

Architect: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), New York. Design partners Roger Duffy and Colin Koop, managing partner Laura Ettelman, design principals Peter Lefkovits and Derek A.R. Moore. Structural engineering: SOM (Preetam Biswas, Charles Besjak and others). MEP: Arup for the terminal, Buro Happold for the transit hub. Landscape: Grant Associates. Interior design: Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla (AJSK). Lighting: Brandston Partnership. Landside infrastructure: STUP Consultants. Credits as listed by Architectural Record and SOM.

Contractor: Larsen & Toubro, on a contract covering design, procurement, engineering and construction, awarded in October 2018 (Airport Technology). Engineered bamboo: supplied by MOSO International and installed by Lindner Group (MOSO).

Client and operator: Bangalore International Airport Limited (BIAL).

Dates: design finished 2018 (SOM); construction began 2019 (Airport Technology); inaugurated 11 November 2022; domestic operations from 15 January 2023 (BIAL); international operations from 31 August 2023.

Size: terminal about 255,000 sq m (BIAL and SOM; other BIAL figures give 255,661 sq m), plus a two-level transit hub of about 123,000 sq m (SOM). Capacity: 25 million more passengers a year in phase one (BIAL).

Status: in use. Beyond the forecourt, entry is for ticketed passengers.

Kempegowda Airport Terminal 2 architect: who designed and built it

SOM's New York office designed the terminal. Its project page gives the design as finished in 2018 and construction as complete in 2023, with SOM's own teams on architecture, interiors and structure. It was SOM's second large terminal in India after Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport Terminal 2 of 2014, according to the joint SOM and BIAL press release of 3 January 2024.

Grant Associates designed the gardens, Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla the interiors, and Arup the terminal's services. L&T built phase one, and Airport Technology (27 March 2023) reports its contract was worth Rs 30.36 billion, with Turner Construction as project manager.

The brief and the client

The garden idea was the client's. SOM's design principal Peter Lefkovits, quoted by Dezeen (Starr Charles, 19 January 2024), says "the client originally proposed a simple, yet captivating idea: to design a 'terminal in a garden'." BIAL's managing director and chief executive Hari Marar, quoted on Grant Associates' project page, ties it to Bengaluru's name as the Garden City of India and says the aim was an experience that "feels like a stroll in a park".

BIAL's Terminal 2 page sets out four pillars: terminal in a garden, sustainability, technology, and art and culture. The practical brief was capacity: 25 million more passengers a year, as BIAL's chief executive said at the opening (The Moodie Davitt Report, 11 November 2022), and SOM's project page says the airport's annual capacity doubles from 25 million to 50 million, with room for 20 million more later.

Site and context

Terminal 2 sits east of Terminal 1 on the existing airport campus, served by a 4.4 km access road called Terminal Boulevard and free shuttles between the terminals, according to BIAL's statement on the start of international flights (ACI Asia-Pacific, 30 August 2023). Elevated bridges link it to Terminal 1 and the airport hotel (SOM).

The city shaped the concept. "The streets in Bangalore are often lined with trees, and the city has a rich history of landscape design," SOM managing partner Laura Ettelman told Architectural Record (Clifford A. Pearson, 9 January 2024). Airport Technology and the Moodie Davitt Report both give 7,700 transplanted trees. For the materials ordinary houses in the city use, see our guide to building materials in Bangalore.

Bangalore airport Terminal 2 architecture: concept and design ideas

Three ideas run through the architects' and the client's accounts.

A garden route, not a corridor. SOM describes a sequence of garden spaces between the city and the aircraft: the transit hub plaza, indoor planting, hanging gardens, and a forest belt that every departing passenger crosses.
Calm over spectacle. Lefkovits, quoted by Dezeen, gives the aim as "to radically reimagine the travel experience by connecting passengers to nature." Architectural Record notes that the team chose an orthogonal building, in contrast to the sculptural, undulating roof of SOM's Mumbai terminal, on which much of the same team had worked.
Local materials on a flexible frame. SOM's press release says the rectilinear structure was chosen for efficiency and flexibility, with engineering aimed at "reduced embodied carbon" and local sourcing.

Kempegowda International Airport Terminal 2 map: plan and zoning

The plan reads as five zones in a row, from city side to airside (SOM and Architectural Record).

Transit hub. A T-shaped, two-level outdoor plaza of about 123,000 sq m in front of the terminal, with outdoor retail, event and entertainment space meant to draw local residents too.
Covered plaza. A covered space where families gather, shop and eat, since in India relatives often see travellers off. Only ticketed passengers go further.
Landside terminal. Check-in, security, immigration and retail on the departures level, with arrivals and baggage claim below. BIAL says the terminal has four levels. Past security, international and domestic passengers have separate shops and food (SOM).
Forest belt. A planted band, 90 m wide by SOM's figure, between the terminal and the gates, with paths, indigenous plants and two-storey garden pavilions clad in bamboo. Bridges cross it to the gates. SOM's project page calls them covered, open-air bridges; Architectural Record calls them enclosed.
Gates. Every stand has "swing" capacity: one wide-body aircraft for an international flight or two narrow-body aircraft for domestic ones. The SOM and BIAL release gives 13 wide-body stands that can work as 28 narrow-body ones, with a future expansion to 20 wide-body stands.

Schematic plan of Bengaluru Airport Terminal 2 read from city side to airside: a T-shaped two-level transit hub with elevated walkways to Terminal 1 and the hotel, a covered plaza, the landside terminal with column clusters on a grid and hanging planters, a planted forest belt crossed by three bridges with bamboo pavilions, then the gates and aircraft stands; a red line traces the passenger route through all five zones — The passenger route runs from the transit hub through the landside terminal and across the forest belt to the gates. Order of zones only, not the real layout. Diagram: MOA

Gate counts differ: Architectural Record counts 11 new gates, the Moodie Davitt Report 19 on L-shaped piers, and L&T 23 boarding bridges and 15 bus gates. BIAL publishes the current layout on its terminal map; the drawings themselves are SOM's, and SOM's project page shows a selection.

Section and structure: steel inside, bamboo outside

Some write-ups call the bamboo the structure. It is not. Architectural Record sets out the system:

Check-in and retail halls: long-span steel moment frames carry the roof on steel columns set on an 18 m (59 ft) grid. Each column is a cluster of four steel posts, clad in bamboo.
Gate areas: long-span steel trusses push the columns to the edges, so walkways and sightlines stay clear. SOM's project page says the same.
Lower floors: a regular reinforced-concrete moment frame gives large column-free areas for baggage claim and arrivals.
Roof: the architects describe it as "one of the lightest large-scale terminal roofs in the world". That is their claim, with no published figure. SOM says the roof uses only Indian-made materials and local construction methods, and Preetam Biswas, SOM's structural engineering principal, wanted the structure to be "a beacon of the government's 'Make in India' policy" (SOM and BIAL release).

Schematic section of the Terminal 2 check-in and retail hall: a reinforced-concrete lower level for arrivals and baggage claim, and above it a tall departures hall whose roof sits on long-span steel moment frames with deep eaves and skylights; bamboo-clad column clusters stand on an 18 metre grid under a bamboo-lattice ceiling with planters hanging from it; insets show one column in plan as four steel posts wrapped in bamboo, and a gate area where long-span trusses put the columns at the edges — Steel does the structural work and bamboo wraps it: four-post columns on an 18 m grid in the halls, long-span trusses over the gates. Principle only, not the real section. Diagram: MOA

The grid was chosen for change: Architectural Record says it lets the interiors be rearranged as check-in and security technology moves on. Hanging the planters from the ceiling kept the floor free, and clustering them in busy areas and spreading them in quiet ones makes them a wayfinding cue.

Materials and construction

The engineered bamboo

The bamboo is laminated, not raw cane. The supplier, MOSO International BV, says on its reference page it was first approached in early 2017, and that its N-vision tubes were pressed from Moso bamboo strips at partner factories in China in custom sizes. It gives about 800,000 m of tube indoors and 200,000 m in covered outdoor areas. L&T's figure, "about 1,000 kilometers of engineered bamboo", matches that total. Lindner Group installed the tubes as a ceiling system, and MOSO also supplied the tubes that wrap the columns. Architectural Record says the bamboo was treated for fire and insect resistance.

So the roof is Indian-made by SOM's account, while the bamboo was made abroad by MOSO's. It was SOM's first use of engineered bamboo; Lefkovits, quoted in Wallpaper (Ellie Stathaki, 23 August 2023), says it is renewable, works inside and out, and needs fewer secondary supports than natural wood or bamboo. For bamboo in ordinary Indian buildings, see our guide to bamboo house construction.

Terminal 2 check-in hall at night: a ceiling of closely spaced engineered bamboo slats, tall bamboo-clad column clusters in rows, and bell-shaped planters full of greenery hanging from the ceiling above queue lanes and check-in counters — The check-in hall in November 2025: the bamboo-lattice ceiling, bamboo-clad column clusters and the hanging planted bells that BIAL describes over the entrance, check-in and security areas. Photo: Reema Jalihal, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Stone, brick and rattan

SOM lists locally sourced ivory brown granite, umber red brick and traditionally woven rattan. Architectural Record adds brick made locally by L&T and rattan millwork by Sreeji and Rachana Art; Airport Technology describes an indoor garden with rammed-earth walls and waterfalls by the retail area.

Art

BIAL's art programme, "Naurasa", placed 60 works by 43 artists (Moodie Davitt Report). The works belong to their artists, so this post shows none.

Light, climate and services: the claims, labelled

Most performance figures come from BIAL or the designers, not from published measurement.

Daylight: BIAL's sustainability page gives 10,500 sq m of skylights. Lefkovits says in Wallpaper they were tuned to balance plants' light needs against energy loads.
Energy: BIAL says the airport campus runs on 100 per cent renewable energy. Its own release of 18 May 2023 gives 6.5 MW of solar PV supplying 16.7 per cent of the terminal's annual energy, so by these figures most of the renewable supply comes from outside the terminal; Architectural Record says on-site and off-site solar. The opening-day reports give an estimated 24.9 per cent energy saving from solar panels and daylight harvesting (Moodie Davitt Report, Airport Technology).
Water: rainwater ponds holding 413 million litres (BIAL), six of them by the Moodie Davitt Report's count; a 37 per cent cut in potable water from efficient fittings (BIAL's IGBC release).
Landscape: BIAL's garden page counts more than 3,600 native plant species, 620 endemic plants and over 6 lakh plants, and BIAL's statements give more than 10,000 sq m of green walls, hanging gardens and outdoor gardens (ACI Asia-Pacific, Airport Technology). Grant Associates gives the forest belt as 7 ha and says it helps passively cool the surroundings and manage runoff; the claim that the gardens keep the area two to three degrees cooler comes from BIAL's opening material (Moodie Davitt Report).
Ratings: LEED Platinum pre-certification from the US Green Building Council before opening, which BIAL and SOM call the largest airport terminal in the world to receive it; and IGBC Platinum under the Green New Buildings rating, announced by BIAL on 18 May 2023. (SOM's project page lists IGBC as "N/A".) For what these ratings measure, see our guide to IGBC, GRIHA and LEED in India.

We found no independent, published study of the terminal's measured energy use or indoor temperatures. Until one appears, treat the savings and cooling figures as design claims.

Reception: awards, praise and the leaks

The terminal won the World Special Prize for an Interior at the 2023 Prix Versailles, an award BIAL described on 20 December 2023 as "acknowledged by UNESCO" (ACI Asia-Pacific). SOM lists further awards in 2024, including the AIA New York State transportation award, Dezeen Awards and Architect magazine's Architecture and Interiors Awards, where juror Brooke Horan said the terminal "feels warm and welcoming and comfortable".

Water has been the recorded problem. After rain on the evening of 2 May 2023, the official BLR Airport account said a heavy downpour "caused leakage in the kerbside of Terminal 2" and spoke of "teething problems" being addressed (Business Today, 4 May 2023). On 9 May 2024, BIAL reported "water leakage in certain areas of the terminals" after a sudden, very heavy downpour, and 17 flights were diverted to Chennai because of the weather (Business Today, 10 May 2024). Neither statement gave a technical cause.

What designers in India can take from it (our reading)

Hang the planting, keep the floor. Suspended planters left the hall floor free for queues and counters and doubled as wayfinding. Where floor area is money, planting overhead may be easier to justify, if irrigation and maintenance access are designed from day one.
Separate the structure from the material story. Steel and concrete carry the loads; bamboo, brick and rattan carry the identity and can be replaced or rearranged. That split keeps the natural material out of the load path and makes later change easier, though the bamboo still had to be treated for fire.
Make the landscape do a job. The forest belt separates landside from airside, gives passengers somewhere to wait and, by Grant Associates' account, helps with cooling and runoff. Landscape that earns its area survives budget cuts.
Treat the big roof and the kerb as the riskiest details. Two leak episodes in the first 18 months, both in heavy storms, show how hard short, intense downpours are on large roofs and open kerbs. Design gutters, outlets and canopy edges for intense short storms, and check them before the first May rains.

For a method to document a building like this for a studio or thesis, see our guide to documenting an architecture case study. SOM's tall buildings are covered in our Burj Khalifa case study.

Visiting

Terminal 2 is a working airport. Past the forecourt, the terminal is open to ticketed passengers only (Architectural Record), so most visitors see it on a flight. The transit hub plaza was designed with outdoor shops and event space for local residents too (SOM). For current airlines, maps and getting there, use BIAL's Terminal 2 page and its terminal map.

FAQ

Who designed Kempegowda International Airport Terminal 2?

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), from its New York office, with Grant Associates for landscape, Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla for interiors and Arup for building services. SOM's own engineers designed the structure.

Who built Kempegowda Airport Terminal 2?

Larsen & Toubro built phase one under a contract awarded in October 2018 that covered design, procurement, engineering and construction (Airport Technology). The client and operator is Bangalore International Airport Limited.

When was Terminal 2 inaugurated and when did it open?

Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated it on 11 November 2022. Domestic flights began on 15 January 2023 (BIAL), and international flights moved to Terminal 2 from 31 August 2023 (ACI Asia-Pacific).

What is the area of Kempegowda International Airport Terminal 2?

About 255,000 sq m by BIAL's and SOM's figures; BIAL has also given 255,661 sq m, and Architectural Record 2.75 million sq ft. The transit hub in front adds about 123,000 sq m (SOM).

What did Terminal 2 cost?

Reports on inauguration day, carried by ANI, gave about Rs 5,000 crore (ThePrint, 11 November 2022). Airport Technology gives Rs 50 billion for phase one and Rs 133.5 billion for the wider programme, including a runway.

How many terminals does Bengaluru airport have, and is T2 domestic or international?

Two. In BIAL's August 2023 announcement, all international flights moved to Terminal 2 and domestic flights were split between Terminals 1 and 2. Airlines move between terminals, so check BIAL's site before travelling.

Designing public buildings or landscapes? See projects by MOA members.

Sources

SOM: Kempegowda International Airport, Terminal 2, project page (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
SOM and BIAL: SOM's new "Terminal in a Garden" welcomes global travelers to Kempegowda International Airport, press release, 3 January 2024 (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
Architectural Record, Clifford A. Pearson: A new airport terminal in Bengaluru brings nature inside, 9 January 2024 (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
Dezeen, Starr Charles: SOM designs "terminal in a garden" for Bengaluru airport, 19 January 2024 (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
Wallpaper, Ellie Stathaki: Kempegowda International Airport's Terminal 2 is a celebration of its 'garden city', Bengaluru, 23 August 2023 (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
BIAL: Terminal 2, Sustainability and Terminal in a Garden pages (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
BIAL: BLR Airport's T2 receives prestigious IGBC Platinum Rating for Sustainability, 18 May 2023 (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
ACI Asia-Pacific: BLR Airport's Terminal 2 set to commence international operations from August 31, 30 August 2023 (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
ACI Asia-Pacific: Terminal 2 earns UNESCO's recognition as one of the world's most beautiful airports, 20 December 2023 (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
Grant Associates: Terminal 2 at Kempegowda International Airport Bengaluru, project page (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
MOSO: Kempegowda International Airport Terminal 2 in Bengaluru, reference project (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
L&T Construction: A new garden terminal at Bengaluru (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
Airport Technology: Kempegowda International Airport Terminal 2, Bengaluru, India, 27 March 2023 (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
The Moodie Davitt Report: "Terminal in a garden": Bengaluru Kempegowda International Airport officially opens new T2, 11 November 2022 (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
ThePrint (ANI): PM Modi inaugurates Terminal 2 of Kempegowda International Airport in Bengaluru, 11 November 2022 (accessed 11 Nov 2026)
Business Today: Water leakage at Bengaluru airport! Netizens share videos of Kempegowda Terminal 2, 4 May 2023, and Bengaluru Rain: Airport's Terminal 2 flooded, 17 flights diverted to Chennai as heavy downpour lash the city, 10 May 2024 (accessed 11 Nov 2026)