Feb 16, 2010

Is there a pretty airport?


So this one of the more bizarre rankings I have stumbled on. Apparently, the US magazine Travel and Leisure made a list of the ugliest airports. The stand outs:

1. JFK, NY: “More than dysfunctional, it’s completely bananas,” says Museum of Modern Art design curator Paola Antonelli.

2. CDG, Paris: It is described as "a symbol of a fiendishly technocratic world where nothing works and nobody cares". And British design guru John Thackara believes the airport “has rendered everyone who works there sociopathic. Its staff are literally unable to empathize with the appalling experiences they inflict on passengers.”

And finally from our region...
3. Sheremetyevo International Airport, Moscow: "“Sheremetyevo was built in the ‘70s in the ‘heroic’ international style" ... yeah enough said.

10. Vrazhdebna, Sofia: “The old terminal is, as you’d expect, an unpleasant amalgam of styles and additions,” the magazine writes. “The new one should have been an improvement—with many of the characteristics of today’s best airports, like lots of glass and high ceilings—yet it wound up looking like one of those impressively shiny but irredeemably wrongheaded post-Communist showplaces.”

To be fair, according to the magazine about 90% of the world’s airports—from jam-packed hubs like Frankfurt to dusty outposts like Muscat, Oman—could easily compete for the title of world’s ugliest. Still... ouch!

1 comment:

Pirates(and)Diplomats said...

I landed at Vrazhdebna within 6 hours of the new terminal opening.

I cherish the choking smell of paint fumes as a beloved memory.