5. Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)

Starting out at number 5, we find ourselves in the never-ending sun of Los Angeles, California. Between January and May 2011, the Los Angeles International Airport served an astonishing 24,230,832 passengers, all while competing with four other airports in the Los Angeles area. LAX is designed so that each terminal’s arrival gate feeds directly to the exit, and its eastbound approach over the Pacific Ocean is known for terrifying new flyers!

4. O’Hare International Airport (ORD)

Nestled west of downtown Chicago we find the fourth busiest airport in the world, O’Hare International Airport. ORD is perhaps the most intriguing airport on our list to look at from above, due to its centralised design being surrounded by six intersecting runways. From January to May of 2011, O’Hare handled 25,986,415 passengers in its busy and sometimes frantic terminals. The weather around Chicago has been known to leave its mark on O’Hare as well – in 2010 1 out of every 5 flights (21.5%) into O’Hare was delayed by more than 15 minutes.²

Like most busy airports around the world, O’Hare is expanding through its own modernisation plan. Evidence can be seen from above in the form of a new east-west runway being built at the south end of the airport.

3. London Heathrow Airport (LHR)

Ranking number three in our list, we find the busiest airport in the EU and the airport that handles more international passengers than anywhere else, London’s Heathrow Airport. In the first half of 2011, Heathrow saw 26,733,585 passengers, which is logistically impressive when you consider LHR only has 2 runways, and it’s also competing with London’s four other airports! In what is becoming a common theme, the airport’s terminals are centrally located in this mess between the runways, with the exception of an international terminal on the south end of the airfield.

What would the world’s largest international airport be without the world’s largest passenger airplane? Here’s one of the massive Airbus A380s, which we found heading out towards the runway. This plane can be configured to hold up to an amazing 853 people, but sources indicate this particular bird has somewhere between 550-650 seats onboard.

2. Beijing Capital International Airport (PEK)

The Asian market is well represented on our countdown in the form of China’s Beijing Capital International Airport, ranking number two in passenger traffic with 31,080,482 flyers in the first 5 months of this year. That’s nearly 5 million more than Heathrow in the same time period! It looks like the day this satellite photo was taken however things are kind of slow, as there isn’t much traffic sitting at the gate.

We did however happen to spot this Boeing 777 mid-takeoff! Or is landing? Hmm…

1. Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL)

Surprised? Well you shouldn’t be! Year after year, the Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Atlanta continues to dominate the various statistical categories and easily claim the title of “The World’s Busiest Airport”. It’s had the highest number of annual passengers every year since 1998, the most air traffic in 1999, 2000 and from 2005 through to today, and it even set a world record in 2007 when the airport had a mind boggling 994,346 takeoffs and landings in one year! That’s an average of nearly one takeoff and one landing every minute of every day for a solid year! In an effort to handle this unbelievable amount of traffic, the airport expanded and added a fifth runway in 2006 that literally crosses over Interstate 85 Interstate 285.

ATL has 195 gates spread across six terminals, all accessible by an underground train system. Some of these gates are squeezed extremely tightly together. Delta Airlines (which appropriately happens to be the world’s largest airline) uses Hartsfield–Jackson as its main hub airport, flying over 59% of all flights here. To avoid radio confusion the FAA officially renamed taxiway D (normally pronounced Delta everywhere else) to Taxiway Dixie.

Atlanta had 36,548,629 passengers between January and May of 2011, which is 5.5 million more than Beijing, and they’re still expanding! Google imagery shows us construction of the new terminal F, due to be opened in Spring 2012, and also the airport’s control tower, which happens to be the tallest in the United States as well!

Honourable Mentions

Amongst aviation geeks you will hear the grumblings that an airport isn’t the busiest unless it has the most planes, or the most cargo, or the most international passengers, or whatever! So to be well-rounded in our not so scientific list, here are a few honourable mentions that don’t quite have the passenger counts to make the top 5, but make up for it in other areas.

Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) – Ranks number 4 in traffic movement.

Denver International Airport (DEN) – Ranks number 5 in traffic movement.

Hong Kong International Airport (HKG) – Ranks number 1 in cargo traffic.

Memphis International Airport (MEM) – Ranks number 2 in cargo traffic.

Locations: Arkansas, California, China, Colorado, Georgia, Hong Kong, Illinois, Texas, United Kingdom / Categories: Aircraft, Buildings, Structures

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The bridge spans connects the eastern coastal city of Qingdao to the suburb of Huangdao, and despite several reputable sources claiming the Jiaozhou Bay Bridge is the world’s longest bridge to cross the sea, the triple-ended bridge actually spans a bay, so it probably only qualifies as the “world’s longest roadway bridge over water”.

Except there’s a bit of disagreement from the previous holder of the title – the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in southern Louisiana, which claims it’s still the true record holder – and it may have a point.

The argument is that the Jiaozhou Bay Bridge is over water for only(!) 25.5 km (15.8 mi), while the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway crosses water for 38 km (24 mi). These figures were announced by a “representative of Lake Pontchartrain Causeway”, but given the complexity of the Jiaozhou Bay Bridge, who knows what methodology was used to get to these numbers!

We originally wrote about the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway back in April 2005, which today (thanks in part to China’s seemingly unstoppable economic expansion) is one of only two bridges outside Asia that remains amongst the top ten longest bridges in the world. Which could perhaps explain why the anthropomorphised Lake Pontchartrain Causeway is upset.

Regardless of which bridge is longer (and under which definition), there can be no question that these staggeringly huge bridges are sheer masterpieces of modern engineering and construction. Here’s s Street View image from the middle of the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway which demonstrates its length brilliantly.

Click through to the map and spin around – you can’t see land anywhere. The bridge is so long that the curvature of the Earth obscures the shore from sight!

This Wikipedia page lists all the longest bridges in the world, including several land-based ones that are far longer than either the Jiaozhou Bay Bridge or the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway!

Thanks to Barry for the Street View link!

Locations: China / Categories: Bridges

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Founded in 2001, Ordos City was rapidly developed on a swath of uninhabited desert along the Yellow River. Fuelled by a booming Chinese economy and over £100 billion of public and private investment, enough housing and infrastructure were built to accommodate 300,000+ residents. Nearly a decade into its existence, Ordos City is home to barely 30,000 inhabitants¹ and consequently, a lot of empty homes and offices:

As well as a host of grandiose public works projects which remain either under-construction or extremely under-patronised:

Despite its post-apocalyptic feel, Ordos City has not suffered the same plummeting housing prices as in Dubai and much of the west. New construction continues and housing developments seem to have no trouble finding buyers. Here we can see the scale of the new infrastructure for continued development in the Kangbashi district of Ordos City:

The key to all of this growth in the face of global recession lies in the tremendous level of wealth found in the more populous coal and natural gas-rich areas of Ordos Prefecture. In fact, income data suggests that the local GDP per capita, £14,000, is more than twice that of Beijing and may be one of the highest in China. Though housing investors seem to be in plentiful supply, it will be interesting to see if anyone ever chooses to inhabit the homes they purchase!

For more information about Ordos City watch this informative Al-Jazeera reportage

Locations: China / Categories: Abandoned, Buildings, Deserts, Monuments, Weirdness

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While much of China’s vast countryside is only covered by low-res imagery, Google recently released new high-res images of the area around the dam, giving us our first real chance to write about it.

First conceived around 90 years ago, the proposed dam was strongly supported by Chairman Mao in the 1950s. However, it wasn’t until the mid-90s that construction finally began on the dam, which is over 2km wide and 185m high.

The statistics surrounding this project are staggering:

• A total cost of 180 billion yuan ($30 billion US), an amount which is actually below budget, and which will be recovered with ten years of power generation.
• Construction used more than 27 million cubic metres of concrete and 463,000 tonnes of steel.
• Over a hundred million cubic metres of earth were moved
• Around 22,500 MW of electricity will be created by 32 primary generators once maximum capacity is reached within the next year.
• While this was expected to be 10% of national demand for power, industrial growth across the country means that it will now be less than 3%.

Fourteen of the generators are found on the north end of the dam, with twelve on the south side¹, separated by the spillways. Six more are located below a nearby mountain.

Immediately to the north of the dam is a ship lift which is still under construction, with completion expected in 2014. It will be capable of moving ships up to 3,000 tons through the 113m vertical difference between water levels.

Beyond the lift is a series of locks for vessels up to 10,000 tons, which take about 4 hours to transit. Coupled with safer water caused by higher water levels in the gorges, these locks have allowed a tenfold increase in the amount of freight on the river – leading to a significant reduction in emissions from the trucking industry. Hydro power is also considerably cleaner than the coal power plants which are the norm in China.

However, there are concerns about serious environmental impacts caused by the dam, including the destruction of wetlands and habitat for a variety of animals. Riverbank erosion and landslides are another major concern.

There was also a significant human impact, with more than a million people forced from their homes and farms along the Yangtze. Significant historical and archaeological sites were also submerged.

The famous three gorges are Qutang, Wu and Xiling, and are mostly still covered by old low-res imagery which doesn’t show today’s higher water levels.

Recent heavy rains lead to flooding in the region and was a serious test of the dam’s strength, with water rising to within 20m of maximum capacity. Authorities claim that the dam helped prevent disastrous flooding downstream. The BBC has a spectacular video showing excess water being expelled from the slipways.

You can read more at Wikipedia, and at the dam’s official site, which puts a slightly more positive ‘spin’ on the issues surrounding the project than has been presented in the world’s media.

Thanks to Dan, Sebastian Nebel, woowoowoo, Peter Donohue, t.r.mcloughlin, luluwing, Chris Yao, Marco Rodrigues, terLag, xlk, Jonathan Crone and Adam.

Locations: China / Categories: Natural Landmarks, Structures, Watercraft

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Japanese pavilion / U.A.E. pavilion

Set in sprawling grounds on either side of the Huangpu River, the Expo comprises multiple pavilions representing different continents and themes. Within each pavilion are buildings from various countries, organisations and businesses.

From the main entrance, the site is dominated by Expo Axis, a 100m long building which is the world’s largest membrane structure.  Six large steel and glass funnel shapes allow natural light to enter and focus on the various installations.

Organisers expect upwards of 70million people to visit the Expo during the next few months, so huge infrastructure requirements had to be included. Immediately to the west of the Axis are various large areas for dining and entertainment, along with a theme pavilion. The latter’s roof was designed to resemble traditional Shanghai windows, while the exterior is based on origami creations. It contains three major installations on themes of urban living.

While to the east of the Axis, with pride of place for the host nation (one assumes Feng Shui had something to do with the layout), is the large China pavilion which uses traditional architecture to form a roof intended to resemble an ancient crown.

Further north is a large ufo-shaped performing arts building / culture centre.

To the east of the China Pavilion are those of many Asian nations including Japan’s organically-formed pavilion, plus the United Arab Emirates’ bronze sand-dune shaped structure and Israel’s seashell-inspired location, just three of many spectacular buildings created specially for this expo.

Beyond the Asian pavilions is Expo Village – accommodation for those working on site for the next six months.

Moving to the far western end of the site, we find the Pavilions of the Americas, which include an interesting trio of buildings: the Mexican display of kite-shaped canopies,  the Chilean wave-shaped structure and the Möbius-strip building created for Venezuela. The Canadian pavilion features performances by Cirque du Soleil and a virtual waterfall. The US pavilion is a giant steel-clad structure but the “warehouse-like” design has been quite poorly received.

The African nations are gathered in one large pavilion near the river, alongside the Windows of the City performance space.

Further east are assorted European nations, including Russia’s pavilion (their first at an Expo in 30 years), which is surrounded by 12 irregular towers. Germany’s silver membrane-wrapped structure is next to Poland’s lattice-work canopy. Denmark and Finland created structures that look very similar from the air, but which are remarkably different at ground level.

In the centre of the complex are the Southeast Asia / Oceania pavilions, such as Australia’s oxidized steel structure, along with those of assorted international bodies such as the UN World Meteorological Organisation which will allow visitors to feel like they are walking through a cloud.

To cope with the crowds of visitors, the permanent bridge across the river has been supplemented by a temporary floating bridge (possibly consisting of a number of boats tethered together), though it was installed after this new imagery was taken.

The bridges carry visitors to the Enterprise Pavilion – a combination of displays by various multinational corporations such as Coca Cola (with highly reflective red surface, apparently… or maybe they just installed a supernova), and experiential centres such as the Abilia pavilion which will provide ‘happy learning activities’ for children.

A final Expo zone features more corporate pavilions and many displays on urban best practices.

All of the buildings mentioned here are much more spectacular at ground level, so I suggest you visit the official Expo 2010 site to learn more and get a good look at them.¹

Wikipedia also has some good information, but I definitely recommend this photo gallery of the Expo on the Big Picture site.

Locations: China / Categories: Bridges, Buildings, Structures

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Asinelli and Garisenda Towers in Bologna, Italy - The Asinelli (the taller tower) has a height of 92 m and overhang of 2.2 m, while the Garisenda (the smaller tower) has a height of 48 m and overhang of 3.2 m. The Asinelli tower was used as a prison back in 14th century and since then has been used in scientific experiments related to Earth’s gravitation, and served as a sight post in World War II.

Pagoda at Chongsheng Temple in Yunnan, China - The Three Pagodas were all built between 850-950 AD in the form a symmetric triangle north of the ancient city of Dali. The tallest pagoda reaches a height of 69.1 m, but over 1,000 years of earthquakes below a weak foundation has caused the left pagoda to tilt. Today, the local government has taken great measures to strengthen the base and preserve these structures for years to come.

The Crooked House in West Midlands, England - Originally built as a farmhouse in 1765, subsidence from local mining in the 1800s left one side of this building sitting four feet below the other side! Today the building serves as a restaurant/pub that offers some very intriguing optical illusions like glasses sliding across tables and marbles rolling uphill.

The Leaning Tower of Suurhusen, Germany was, after some debate declared the most tilted tower in the world by the Guinness Book of World Records, with its steeple inclined at a head-tilting angle of 5.19 degrees. The church was built with foundations made from oak tree trunks, and when water was drained from the ground in the 19th century the trees rotted resulting in the Earth sinking underneath the tower.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa, Italy - What list would be complete without the most famous leaning tower of them all, the Leaning Tower of Pisa? Thanks to Google’s ultra-high resolution of the area, you can look into the center of the tower from above and even see tourists gathering at the base of the tower. Unfortunately, the Street View car never really gets close enough to see the tower itself, but we have a great view of the perimeter wall that surrounds the Piazza dei Miracoli.

For a list of leaning towers around the world, check out this Wikipedia article.

Locations: China, England, Germany, Italy / Categories: Buildings, Structures

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The “streets” are about 20 metres wide, and the pattern occupies a rectangle measuring about 1km x 1.8km, aligned north to south and so sharply defined that it almost appears superimposed on the image. If you zoom in, though, you can see that the lines really are there on the ground.

Exploring the surrounding area, things get weirder. A short distance to the west are what appear to be a series of runways in various states of repair. But where are the support buildings and access roads?

At the northern end of one runway, there seem to be bomb craters. Could these be fake runways built as aerial bombardment targets? These mysterious blue-roofed buildings also seem to have been blown up.

Further west again, what’s this? Another big maze rectangle, this one looking old and faded. And just beyond… a circular arrangement of vehicles, planes and… other stuff, laid out over a 12-pointed star pattern. Another target? The plot thickens!

Frankly, we could fill a week’s worth of postings with the odd stuff on display around here. What are all these suspiciously regular shapes filling dry river beds, with signs of excavation and vehicle tracks? Could they be giant sandbags being filled and then carted off for construction work? If so there are thousands of them!

If any readers have any theories (or if anyone in the Chinese military happens to be reading!) then we’d love to know. One thing we do know, thanks to Google Earth’s historic imagery feature, is when the “maze” in our first photo was built. A photo dated April 14 2005 shows it partially completed, but by May 30 it was all finished.

Thanks to Garret.

Locations: China / Categories: Aircraft, Buildings, Deserts, Other Vehicles, Weirdness

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Beijing-South is the Chinese capital’s hub for high-speed rail travel, and is Asia’s largest train station.

Upon its completion, the Beijing-South became the third passenger rail terminal in central Beijing, focusing on long-range inter-city travel. It replaced the comparatively minuscule Yongdingmen Station, which until 2006 had operated continuously for over a century.

Resembling an airport more than a traditional passenger railway station, the new Beijing-South Station boasts 24 platforms with the ability to send 30,000 passengers per-hour¹ zipping off to their destinations. The massive oval-shaped structure encompasses 320,000 square metres² with a waiting area that can accommodate over 10,000 passengers.

Designed to incorporate natural light as well as be environmentally-friendly, Beijing-South Station is a model of energy efficiency. Its central glass roof holds 3,246 solar panels that generate nearly all the building’s electricity!

The station was designed in a joint venture between Tianjin Design Institute and architect Terry Farrel, creator of such notable works as the Peak Tower in Hong Kong, and for you James Bond fans, the SIS building³ on the banks of the River Thames, London.

Requiring 60,000 tonnes of steel and 490,000 cubic metres of concrete to build, the Beijing South Railway Station took a workforce of 4,000 less than 3 years to construct. Looking at Google Earth historical imagery from August 2005 and April 2007 gives a great perspective to the massive scale of this project.

For some great pictures of the interior of the railway station, check out this blog.

Thanks to the Google LatLong Blog.

Locations: China / Categories: Buildings

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The statue alone is 128m tall, and it stands on a 20m tall lotus throne, which in turn stands on a 25m tall pedestal – giving the structure a total height of 153m.

The statue – including the lotus throne – is 128m tall. Its original 25m tall pedestal gave the structure a total height of 153m. However, recent information shows that the hill it was built on has been constructed into an additional pedestal. The total height is now believed to be 208m. Panoramio has several pictures, and this image in particular gives you a sense of just how immense this monument is (and shows the new pedestal under construction.)

Little is known about the Spring Temple Buddha in the West, so it likely wasn’t listed on Wikipedia when Alex wrote the original post. It was constructed in 2002 in response to Taliban bombing of Buddha statues in Afghanistan, as well as to thwart Indian plans to create the world’s largest statue.  I haven’t been able to find any vital statistics about it, but this image seems to show that the toes alone are close to 2m high.

The world’s second largest statue is the Laykyun Setkyar in Myanmar, which is so new (completed in 2008) that we only see it partially constructed on Google Maps.

At 116m on a 13.5m pedestal it is barely taller in total than the Spring Temple statue alone. Panoramio has a few pictures of the completed structure, which also show that it is, interestingly, located near a reclining Buddha which, at 90m in length, would probably be the world’s 9th tallest statue if it was upright.

As it is also located in a somewhat secretive country, detailed statistics are similarly hard to find. The regime consistently claims it is the world’s largest though, despite evidence to the contrary.

The world’s third largest statue is Ushiku Daibutsu in Japan. It was featured in the original Very Large Buddhas post, though there is new imagery that shows it in greater detail.

Thanks to Lukasz for the link to the reclining Buddha, and to Alex for letting me update his original post.

Locations: Burma, China, Japan / Categories: Buildings, Monuments, Structures

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The Turning Torso was designed by world famous Spanish architect, Santiago Calatrava (some of whose work we’ve featured in the past), and represents part of a growing trend for elaborately warped and twisted “torqued towers“.

In San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park the new M.H. De Young Museum was completed in October 2005 – replacing the original building that had been damaged in an earthquake. To prevent damage to the new building, it can move almost a metre thanks to a system of sliding plates and fluid dampers. It’s also entirely clad in copper, which will eventually oxidize, taking on a green colour reflective of the surrounding vegetation.

From many places around the park, the most striking feature of the building is the 44 metre Hamon Tower, the impressive twist of which can be clearly seen from both an aerial and ground-level point of view.

Tower designers aren’t just rotating their towers either – although still under construction in Google’s images, the China Central Television Headquarters building was completed in December 2008, and its design almost defies belief. Especially when you consider that this area is also prone to earthquakes!

Technically the CCTV building isn’t a traditional tower, but rather a “continuous loop of six horizontal and vertical sections covering 381,000 square metres of floor space”. This is probably best summed up by the building’s local nickname – “Big Shorts”.

There are several other torqued towers around the world that are either in planning, or already under construction. However I wonder how many of them will be delayed or cancelled due to the current economic climate?

• 1 World Trade Center, New York City, (formerly known as the Freedom Tower), will have a roof set at 45° from the bottom.
• The Infinity Tower, Dubai, will feature a 90° twist like the Turning Torso, but will be nearly twice the height.
• The Chicago Spire, Chicago, also designed by Santiago Calatrava, will be 160 metres taller than the Sears Tower.
• The Burj al-Taqa, Dubai, will feature a twisted hyperboloid design, and will generate all its own energy.

Finally, check out the totally insane Signature Towers and equally ludicrous Dubai Towers Dubai which are both planned for construction in Dubai.

See the amazing skyscraperpage.com for more jaw dropping future skyscrapers.

Thanks to stephan and Vectoor.

Locations: California, China, Sweden / Categories: Buildings, Shadows, Towers

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