Q&A: What trends are shaping airports and airport terminal design today?
April 29, 2026
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Airport terminal design fundamentals keep aviation designer Lee Glenn grounded. He shares his take on what’s new and next in design for air travel.
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A version of this blog first appeared as “Ask a designer: What trends are shaping airports today?” in Design Quarterly, Issue 27.
Airports feel different lately.
If those “under construction” signs are any indication, air travel is going through some large-scale changes. Right now, we are in the middle of a wave of airport expansion in North America.
Air travel tastes better, too, now that the airport food and drink options come with regional seasoning. We’ve written about airports as brand ambassadors before (see Design Quarterly, Issue 20 | Rethink) and wanted to find out if that trend was continuing or what might come next.
Based in Dallas, Texas, Lee Glenn is one of our design principals. He’s an architectural designer who has worked on multiple projects for Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) and led the design of terminal and concourse projects at major airports in San Francisco (SFO), Atlanta (ATL), Salt Lake City (SLC), Seattle (SEA), and Nashville (BNA). Most recently, he contributed to the terminal expansion at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport (AUS) and the Terminal B project at George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH).
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For the George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) Terminal B Transformation in Houston, Texas, our team concentrated on bringing new life to a 1960s modernist airport. One of the areas of focus is a self-service bag drop, which is becoming essential to modern airports. (Stantec in collaboration with Grimshaw)
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As an airport terminal designer, he has closely watched the airport transformation. He has deep experience in architectural design and coordination for large hub airports. He has helped aviation clients navigate the expression, scale, operational demands, and integration challenges of these complex projects.
He works with multidisciplinary teams and specialty partners on choreographing the airport terminal dance. The dance floor includes passenger terminals, concourses, and landside access. The dancers?
- Passengers
- Wayfinding
- Public art programs
- Processing systems
- Baggage handling
- Amenities
In this interview, Lee shares what’s happening in the world of airport terminal design and what it means.
How did you wind up in the world of airport terminal design?
Lee: I was in the right place at the right time. Back in 1998, I was hired as a senior designer by a firm that was chasing two big projects: a program at the Washington Navy Yard and a complete redevelopment of Salt Lake City Airport—a billion-dollar job, which was a great deal of money then. They won both.
I started on the Navy Yard for six months, then got tapped as lead designer for Salt Lake City’s terminal. I’d never worked on an airport before, so it was terrifying. Luckily, I had great terminal planners as mentors.
That project went on hold after a full schematic design, but I got an incredible introduction to airport design—new terminal, concourses, ground transportation center, light-rail connection, and landside side roadways. They kept winning more airport projects. From there, I just kept rolling from one airport to another.
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The Great Hall project at Denver International Airport in Colorado was a three-phase project designed to improve safety and security, create more intuitive passenger flow, and increase capacity to accommodate continued growth by renovating the whole terminal.
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What kind of projects are you working on now?
Lee: I’m based in Dallas. I joined the team (Page, now Stantec) here about three years ago when they were chasing their first big terminal project as a prime leader: a new landside terminal at Houston Bush Intercontinental. The stakes were high. We won the job, which is under construction now, and I spent a year and a half on that.
Then we landed a major redevelopment project at the Austin Airport. No downtime—I’ve jumped from one big airport project to another. It is a little unusual. More often, you end up at this interim period where the excitement of one is gone, and the next big one hasn’t hit yet.
What trends are shaping airports and airport terminal design today?
Lee: Passenger experience has been a buzzword for 20 years, but now it’s standard practice—amenities, wellness rooms, sensory spaces, yoga rooms.
It’s not revolutionary anymore; it’s expected. The real differentiator is how much airports invest and promote it. SFO makes it part of their DNA, they are really good at it; others do it more quietly.
The other big trend is seamless travel. Boarding passes on phones were the first step, but biometrics are now mainstream. A few years ago, people fussed about privacy; now, nobody blinks when TSA takes a photo.
I recently boarded a flight to Canada using facial recognition—no boarding pass. Automated bag drops are improving, and concessions like Amazon’s “walk in, walk out” stores are popping up.
The goal? Minimize human interaction. Studies show younger travelers want to avoid talking to anyone unnecessarily. Seamless travel is sneaking up on us—we’ll look back and realize we’re already doing it.
" }Passenger experience has been a buzzword for 20 years, but now it’s standard practice—amenities, wellness rooms, sensory spaces, yoga rooms. It’s not revolutionary anymore; it’s expected.
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Here are three more airport trends I’m watching:
Amenities: Lounge space is booming. Our Austin concourse increased its lounge program mid-design—airlines and even credit card companies see revenue in offering quieter, premium spaces. Southwest, historically no-frills, is now considering lounges. It’s a shift toward monetizing comfort.
Bag drops: In the US, you can go to a kiosk and tag your own bag, but you still go to a counter and show your ID to an agent. Then, they take your bag. That’s a US government regulation.
In many places around the world, that’s automated. You arrive, you tag your bag, you go to a kiosk, you drop it off, it disappears. That’s it. That’s still developing here, but even the automated bag drops that we have now are getting quicker.
Networks: In response to extreme traffic congestion, major cities are adding light rail and other transit to connect to airports. Large airports are increasingly part of a multimodal transportation network.
How do revenue and design priorities intersect in airports?
Lee: Concessions and parking are airports’ biggest revenue streams—bigger than airplanes. So, airports push for great concessions programs, which dovetail with passenger-experience goals. But there’s tension: architectural designers want cohesive, high-quality spaces; concessionaires want flexible shells for branding. Some airports prioritize design integration; others just hand over space.
Airports tend to brand themselves as part of the community that they’re in. We used to do that strictly with architectural design, but now a big part of it is with concessions programs. Branding now means local—Austin wants to “keep Austin weird,” for example—so concessions become cultural ambassadors.
It works. People love local flavor.
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The upgraded Santiago International Airport Expansion in Santiago, Chile, offers domestic travel from the original terminal and international travel from the new terminal. The expanded airport has a walkable, open-air plaza between the two terminals. (Joint venture: Stantec Architecture/Capitel S.A.)
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Let’s talk about scale. Are airports getting bigger? What’s driving that?
Lee: Absolutely. Two forces: First, years of criticism about aging US infrastructure (we’re in our third generation of airport infrastructure) sparked massive investment. Second, explosive growth in midsized cities like Nashville and Austin.
Pittsburgh just opened a new terminal—a $7 billion program. Austin’s spending $4 billion; Nashville, over $2 billion. LaGuardia, Boston, Chicago, LAX—multibillion-dollar programs everywhere.
It’s no longer unusual to spend a billion dollars on a terminal. But it’s the airlines that drive growth. They go where the market is, and the airports respond. Airports have strong bond ratings to fund development in the United States. It’s a great time to be an airport architect.
What’s next—EVTOLs, vertical airports?
Lee: EVTOLs (electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft) aren’t science fiction anymore. United Airlines has a $2 billion purchase agreement with a leading manufacturer. Our Houston terminal is EVTOL-ready—the roof is structured for future pads, with vertical circulation planned. The Federal Aviation Administration even has design guidelines for EVTOL facilities. It’s not impacting our daily work yet, but it’s coming.
Vertical airports? Not likely. Moving people vertically is costly and inefficient, and you can’t park planes on the second floor. Land constraints push creativity, but horizontal expansion still wins. It’s simplistic, but if you make passengers go up or down or take a convoluted path, that diminishes the quality of the experience at a very basic level.
Aerotropolis—airports as commercial hubs—is big in Europe and Asia, less so in the US. Some airports with huge acreage, like Denver and Dallas-Fort Worth, are developing office parks and hotels. But most US airports are land-constrained, so it’s rare.
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United Airlines wants to redefine the passenger experience at George Bush Intercontinental Airport. The Terminal B renovation project aims to create a new, state-of-the-art terminal that enhances efficiency, capacity, and connectivity. (Stantec in collaboration with Grimshaw)
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What’s something people don’t understand about airport architecture or airport terminal design?
Lee: The passenger-side experience gets a lot of attention, but programming those areas is not a big deal. Seen from the inside, making a viable piece of transportation infrastructure is so much more complicated and difficult than setting aside space for amenities.
In the end, we’re building transportation infrastructure. We’re not building a park. We’re not building a place for people to come and relax. If you can make the experience less stressful, that’s worthwhile, but most people go to an airport to get on an airplane and go somewhere else. If you want to make it a better experience, you make that easier.
We’re making a workable piece of machinery that facilitates processes for all the people in it. Passengers are one part of the puzzle. There are also airline employees, and there are incredibly expensive, big, clumsy airplanes. The terminal or a concourse? They are designed from the airplane in. Everything in airport terminal design starts with the airplane and how to park it around the building.
Where do you find the most fun in the work?
Lee: When you start a project, you must get to know the community culturally and the goals for the airport.
The first time I went to Salt Lake City, I found an antiquarian bookstore, and I bought $500 worth of books on Utah: art, history, culture, religion, everything. I read all of them, and it gave me a lot of insight. Our design drew on historic plans for Mormon settlements and the distinct palette that artists have used to portray Utah throughout the years.
It’s fun to get into the mindset of a place.
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