If you want to visit an art gallery in New York anytime soon, consider a trip to La Guardia Airport beginning Saturday. That’s the grand opening of its new Terminal B, home to four airlines and interlaced with four sprawling art installations. With three of the four works accessible without a boarding pass, Terminal B just may be the best indoor space for contemporary art — no appointment needed — that the public is welcome to visit in phase one of New York’s reopening. — The New York Times

“Our entire profession is geared toward the values and demands and needs of human beings,” [...] “But all over the world, these huge mechanical entities are now appearing. They are typically enormous, typically rectangular, typically hermetic.” [...] “We need to conceive of architecture that accommodates machines and robots, maybe as a priority,” Koolhaas says. “And that then investigates how robots and human rights might coexist in a single building.” — Time

The new breed of airports take that altered reality and alter it some more, to create their own version of the world.

If you want to be dystopian, airports are prototypes for sinister societies of the future, products of the military-entertainment complex where dictatorial government colludes with big business to create controlling environments. Where individuals are pacified by distractions and ruled by technology. — The Guardian

In 2005, the Port of Seattle predicted Sea-Tac would be at capacity by 2021, with 45 million annual passengers.

Last year, nearly 50 million people flew into or out of Sea-Tac. And the number of planes landing at the airport is expected to increase by nearly 60% between 2014 and 2034. The Port plans to spend roughly $6 billion by 2027 to expand Sea-Tac to meet that rising demand. — The Seattle Times

Parts of the current terminal look dated, and Apple, a modern technology giant known for sleek design, uses United as its corporate airline to shuttle thousands of employees around the world. United accidentally revealed last year that Apple spends $150 million annually with the company on flights, including 50 business class seats a day from San Francisco to Shanghai. — Bloomberg News

Concerned that rising waves will flood runways and buildings in the coming years, officials at San Francisco International Airport are moving ahead with a $587 million plan to build a major new sea wall around the entire airport. — The Mercury News

Earlier this month, the Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport announced that it had hit a much-anticipated milestone in becoming the first airfield in the United States powered by 100% solar energy.

The end result of an ambitious project that started seven years ago, the airport's 2.64-megawatt solar farm was completed with about $5 million of funding from the Federal Aviation Administration. — Forbes

“These are expensive projects. There’s no question. But if we are to reap the benefits of mass transit, we have to provide mass transit that is attractive to individual travelers and their families,” said Rick Cotton, the executive director at the Port Authority, without explaining the rise in cost. “Experience shows that rail mass transit is the most attractive alternative, and we’re committed to provided that.” — AM New York

[W]hen will Los Angeles International Airport resurrect its own iconic, underused, transportation-adjacent architectural wonder?

Maybe soon.

As the airport advances on a major expansion and modernization, including a new people-mover train scheduled to open in 2023, Los Angeles World Airports officials are looking for ways to bring a hotel into the core area that includes the Theme Building. — The Los Angeles Times

Big changes will be coming to Miami International Airport over the next decade or so to meet the demands of the future.

On Tuesday, the Miami-Dade commission approved a capital improvement plan for the airport which would fund up to $5 billion in modernization projects over the next five to 15 years.

The changes are needed as MIA is projected to reach 77 million travelers and more than four million tons of freight by the year 2040. — CBS Miami

This is the era of the glass and steel airport. As if made from the same mold, shiny, glittering terminals have become a status symbol for any city with aspirations. But all of this is a world away from the remoteness of Russia's Arctic regions and the Siberian wilderness [...] built in the mid-20th century when the Soviet Union saw in air transport a way to expand the state's reach to every corner of its territory, even if that meant little more than a dirt runway and a radio shack. — cnn.com

Duangrit Bunnag, the renowned local architect who won the bid to design Suvarnabhumi airport's second terminal, has denied plagiarising the work of a Japanese architect.

"I didn't copy anyone else's work. Those who follow my work will know that I created a similar image in my previous designs, such as for a hotel in Sri Lanka," Mr Duangrit told The Standard, a local online news portal. — bangkokpost.com