Choosing a Terminal-Design Architect for a GCC Mega-Airport

When a GCC procurement or capitalprojects team types "terminal design architects experienced in GCC megaairports" into a search box, the names that come back — Foster + Partners, HOK, Zaha Hadid Architects, Grimshaw,…

When a GCC procurement or capital-projects team types "terminal design architects experienced in GCC mega-airports" into a search box, the names that come back — Foster + Partners, HOK, Zaha Hadid Architects, Grimshaw, NACO, Heerim, Kohn Pedersen Fox — are only half the answer. A signature roofline does not size a check-in hall, route a baggage system, or pass an aerodrome-certification review. The other half is a question most search results skip: which role are you actually buying? A terminal commission spans masterplanning, concept design, detailed design, and technical delivery, and the firm that wins the headline concept is rarely the only one that ends up drawing the building.

This brief explains how terminal-architect selection really works on a Gulf mega-project: the standards a credible design must satisfy, the difference between the architect and the airport planner, the genuine player landscape, the GCC-specific pressures (50 °C heat, dust, GACA/GCAA certification, Vision-2030 scale), and what a buyer should ask before shortlisting.

Masterplanning vs concept vs detailed design — the role you are actually procuring

"Terminal architect" collapses several distinct scopes. Confusing them is the most common procurement error on large airport jobs.

Airport masterplanning sets capacity, runway and apron geometry, terminal footprint, and phasing over 20–40 years. It is driven by traffic forecasts and airfield logic, not aesthetics. This is the domain of specialist aviation consultancies — NACO, Landrum & Brown, and the engineering majors — as much as architects.
Concept / schematic design is where the signature firms shine: the architectural vision, the roof and daylight strategy, the passenger-experience narrative, the massing that becomes the airport's identity.
Detailed design and technical delivery turns the concept into buildable, certifiable, coordinated documentation — structure, MEP, fire engineering, baggage, security, and the hundreds of interfaces a 500,000 m² terminal contains. This is frequently a different (or much larger) team, often a multidisciplinary engineering practice working alongside or under the concept architect.

On Gulf mega-projects these scopes are routinely split across firms. A practical example of the pattern: at King Khaled International Airport in Riyadh, NACO (a Royal HaskoningDHV company) and HOK were appointed together for a terminal-expansion reference design — the aviation planner and the architect as co-leads. The lesson for a buyer is to define the scope boundary precisely before going to market, because a concept-design fee and a full-delivery fee are different orders of magnitude and require different firm capabilities.

The standards a credible terminal design must satisfy

A terminal is an architectural object sitting inside a tightly regulated aerodrome. The architect's freedom ends where these documents begin.

ICAO — the global baseline. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and the other GCC states are ICAO Contracting States, so the aerodrome must comply with:

ICAO Annex 14, Volume I — Aerodrome Design and Operations. The Standards and Recommended Practices for the airfield: runway/taxiway geometry, separation distances, and the obstacle-limitation surfaces a terminal, pier or control tower must not penetrate. A terminal massing that clears those surfaces is non-negotiable.
ICAO Doc 9157 — Aerodrome Design Manual and ICAO Doc 9184 — Airport Planning Manual. Guidance material that expands Annex 14 into engineering and planning detail, including terminal-area and capacity planning.
ICAO Annex 9 — Facilitation. Governs the flow of passengers, baggage and cargo across borders — the standard behind immigration, customs and the arrivals/departures sequence that shapes terminal layout.

IATA — how terminals are sized. Where ICAO governs the airfield, the IATA Airport Development Reference Manual (ADRM) is the industry standard for sizing the building. Its Level of Service (LoS) concept is the language Gulf clients and airlines actually negotiate in. Modern ADRM editions frame LoS as a range rather than a single target, classifying each functional area — check-in, security, emigration/immigration, gate hold-rooms, baggage reclaim — into four bands:

LoS band	What it means
Over-Design	Excess space — comfortable but economically wasteful to build and run
Optimum	The target: enough space and acceptable queue times at a justifiable cost
Sub-Optimum	Crowding and longer waits begin
Under-Provided	Unacceptable congestion and service failure

A competent terminal design states which subsystems it sizes to Optimum and on what design-hour passenger and aircraft assumptions. If a concept cannot map to LoS, it has not yet been engineered — it has been rendered.

Fire and life safety. Airport terminals are a recognised special occupancy. The widely referenced standards are NFPA 415 (Standard on Airport Terminal Buildings, Fueling Ramp Drainage, and Loading Walkways) and NFPA 101 (Life Safety Code), typically applied alongside the local civil-defence fire code (in the UAE, the national fire-and-life-safety code administered by Civil Defence). Long-span, high-volume terminal halls demand explicit smoke-control and egress strategies — a place where the architectural roof concept and fire engineering must be reconciled early, not retrofitted.

National aerodrome regulators. ICAO is implemented locally by the national authority, which holds final say:

UAE — GCAA (General Civil Aviation Authority): issues Civil Aviation Regulations (CARs); aerodrome certification follows ICAO Annex 14 Vol I, with guidance such as CAAP 30 on the issue of an aerodrome certificate.
Saudi Arabia — GACA (General Authority of Civil Aviation): issues GACARs and certifies aerodromes in the Kingdom.
Qatar, Oman, Bahrain and Kuwait each run their own equivalent authority.

The design must achieve an aerodrome certificate under the relevant regulator — a credible architect plans the documentation around that approval gate from day one.

Passenger flow is the real design discipline

The most consequential terminal decisions are invisible in a render: the flow. Departing and arriving passengers, transfer passengers, premium and economy streams, and their baggage must be separated, sequenced and sized so that no single subsystem becomes the choke point. The mega-hubs of the Gulf live or die on transfer flow — Emirates, Qatar Airways and Etihad run connecting-traffic models where a large share of passengers never leave airside, which drives pier length, train/people-mover provision, and minimum-connection-time geometry.

This is why simulation matters. Serious terminal design is validated with pedestrian and baggage-flow modelling against the ADRM LoS bands and the design-hour forecast — not assumed from a floor plan. When evaluating firms, the question is not "is the building beautiful?" but "can you show the simulated LoS and the design-hour assumptions behind this layout?"

The real player landscape

The credible field divides into signature concept architects, aviation planners/engineers, and firms that genuinely do both. Public, verifiable airport credentials:

Foster + Partners — among the most active terminal designers in the GCC. Won the international competition to design King Salman International Airport in Riyadh (a six-runway mega-airport), and designed Red Sea International Airport and a new terminal at Abha Airport — both in Saudi Arabia. A concept and design heavyweight with deep Gulf-airport experience.
HOK — designed the terminal and concourses of Hamad International Airport in Doha, and was appointed (with NACO) on the King Khaled International Airport expansion in Riyadh. Strong aviation-architecture pedigree.
Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF) — masterplanned the Abu Dhabi airport complex and designed the Midfield Terminal (now Terminal A, Zayed International Airport) in Abu Dhabi — a column-spanning, very-large-terminal credential directly in the GCC.
Zaha Hadid Architects — globally significant terminal work (notably Beijing Daxing International Airport) and an established Saudi presence in adjacent infrastructure; an iconic concept firm, strongest where a landmark form is the brief.
Grimshaw — led the terminal concept and schematic design for Istanbul Airport (with Nordic Office of Architecture and Haptic Architects), one of the largest terminals under a single roof — a benchmark for mega-terminal concept work, though that headline project sits just outside the GCC.
NACO (Netherlands Airport Consultants), a Royal HaskoningDHV company — an aviation planning and engineering specialist (not a signature-architecture brand) with decades of masterplanning and design across hundreds of airports, including long involvement at King Khaled International Airport. The kind of partner that anchors the planning and delivery side.
Heerim Architects & Planners — a Korean practice with airport credentials including work on Incheon International Airport's Terminal 2 and numerous other airport plans; an established aviation designer expanding internationally.

Two cautions on the landscape. First, the DWC / Al Maktoum expansion in Dubai — the headline "world's largest airport terminal" programme — has been driven on the planning and engineering side by firms such as Dar Al-Handasah and Landrum & Brown, illustrating that the very largest GCC programmes are often planner/engineer-led megastructures rather than single-signature-architect projects. Second, behind almost every concept architect sits an engineering practice (firms in the scale of WSP and the global multidisciplinary majors) doing the structural, MEP and fire delivery. Do not mistake the named architect for the whole design team.

GCC-specific pressures the design must answer

A terminal that works in a temperate climate is not automatically fit for the Gulf.

Heat (up to ~50 °C) and solar load. Daylight is desirable; uncontrolled solar gain is a cooling-cost and comfort disaster. Roof and façade strategy, glazing selection, shading and the cooling-load implications are first-order design decisions, not finishes-stage details.
Dust and sand. Air-intake filtration, façade cleaning/maintenance access, and the durability of external materials matter more here than in most markets.
Extreme scale and phasing. Vision-2030 and the Gulf growth ambition produce terminals sized for tens of millions of passengers, built in phases while operating. Phaseability — building the next concourse without shutting the live one — is a design competence in its own right.
Transfer-hub geometry. As above, the connecting-traffic models of the big Gulf carriers dictate pier and people-mover design more than origin-and-destination assumptions would.
Bilingual and cultural wayfinding. Arabic/English signage, prayer rooms, family and premium provision, and Ramadan/Hajj peak-handling are real briefing requirements, not optional extras.
Local regulator + certification path. GACA (Saudi) or GCAA (UAE) approval and the local fire/civil-defence code sit on top of ICAO and IATA. A firm that has never delivered into these specific approval regimes carries schedule risk.

What GCC buyers should ask / check before shortlisting

Before a single firm makes the shortlist, get clear answers to these:

Which scope am I buying — masterplan, concept, detailed design, or full delivery? Define the boundary in the brief; do not let it blur. Price and capability differ enormously across them.
Show me the comparable, verifiable airport credentials — completed or under construction, at this scale, ideally in a hot/desert climate or the GCC itself. Distinguish "won the competition" from "delivered and certified".
How do you size to IATA ADRM Level of Service, and to what design-hour forecast? Ask for the LoS band per subsystem and the passenger/aircraft assumptions behind the layout.
Show the passenger- and baggage-flow simulation that validates this concept — not just the renders.
Who does the detailed engineering, fire and baggage delivery, and how do you coordinate them? Identify the full team behind the signature name and how interfaces are managed.
What is your path to the aerodrome certificate under GACA / GCAA (and the local fire/civil-defence code), and where have you achieved it before?
How does the design handle 50 °C heat, solar load and dust — specifically in the roof, façade and cooling strategy?
How is this phased while the airport keeps operating, and what is the expansion logic beyond opening day?
What are the Arabic/English wayfinding, prayer-room, and peak-handling (Hajj/Ramadan) provisions built into the layout?

The headline firms are real and capable — but the right choice depends on the scope you are actually procuring, the standards the design must pass, and whether the firm can prove it has delivered, certified, and operated terminals at GCC scale and in GCC conditions. Buy the role, not the render.