Mexico City’s New International Airport project was designed to revolutionize the airport experience for all travelers and airport personnel, accommodating a capacity of 120 million annually.

Conceived as an “Airport of the Future” born from Mexico’s rich heritage, the airport’s form appears as a luminous, X-shaped continuous structure. The terminal features a lush cacti garden with access roads designed in the pattern of a serpent, evoking the ancient Aztec deity Quetzalcoatl. The facade’s vibrant palette draws from Mexico’s artistic heritage, incorporating the deep reds of Teotihuacan murals, the turquoise of Mayan temples, and the warm earth tones of colonial architecture.

Inside, travelers experience a vast, column-free space—uplifting and luminous. The central hall of the structure illuminates with bright colors representing the Mesoamerican symbol of the sun. With a typical internal roof span of 9 mt, it is nearly three times that of a conventional airport.

The design features exemplary engineering through its lightweight glass and steel structure and soaring vaulted roof, supported by the largest base-isolation system of its kind. This includes an innovative “floating” platform specifically engineered for Mexico City’s challenging soil conditions. The unique prefabricated system demonstrates advanced Mexican engineering capabilities, with a construction methodology that eliminates the need for scaffolding. Although the project was ultimately canceled by the Mexican government during construction, the design stands as a testament to ambitious architectural vision and technical innovation in Mexican infrastructure.