World's Most Beautiful Airports

Land in the heart of Maldive's paradise. Surrounded by the turquiose waters of the Indian Ocean's, Maldives's Malé International Airport is located on Hulhulé Island right next to the capital Male.

This sweeping space, which was designed by Antonio Lamela and Richard Rogers and opened in 2006, was built to provide the 50 million passengers who pass through it each year with an airy, stress-free zone through which to begin or end their journeys.

You'll feel like you've landed in paradise at Samui Airport, with amazing design set up by even more stunning natural surroundings.

The “butterfly” roof has 919 skylights and corresponding reflector panels that adjust to allow just the right amount of daylight inside. At night, these same skylights glow with lighting carefully concealed below the panels. The terminal’s most dramatic feature, however, may be the 5-story vertical garden (aka “The Green Wall”), which has 4 waterfalls and spans nearly 1,000 feet across the main building.

Designed by Eero Saarine, The TWA Flight Center or Trans World Flight Center, 1962 as a standalone terminal at NYC's JFK International Airport for Trans World Airlines. Today, after renovations, the old and new buildings comprise JetBlue Airways' Terminal 5.

Renowned architect César Pelli drew his inspiration from the vast prairies and sky when he conceived of this terminal, the first freestanding airport building in Canada that’s LEED-certified.

One of the most innovatively-designed domestic airports, DIA's Teflon-coated fiberglass roof resembles the area's famous Rocky Mountains.

The beauty of this new terminal, designed by Uruguayan-born architect Rafael Viñoly, is in its grace and simplicity: The entire structure is housed under a gently arching rooftop that sweeps 1,200 feet across the landscape.

Whether its twin steel arches remind you of a bird in flight -- or something that alighted in Lyon from a universe far, far away -- you can definitely spot some kind of avian-theme in France’s fourth busiest airport, designed by architect Santiago Calatrava.

Where traditional Islamic design meets sleek ultra-modern architecture you’ll find Terminal 1, a beautiful study in the confluence of cultures and artistic sensibilities.

Conceived by renowned airport architect Curtis Fentress, Incheon publicly spotlights the best of traditional Korean design -- while still emerging as a futuristic model of efficiency.

While many architects tend to focus on airiness, light and the “sensation of flight” when designing airports, the one who recreated the Wellington’s recently expanded international terminal -- nicknamed “The Rock” -- made a deliberate departure from that trend. In his quest to create something theatrical and distinctively Kiwi, Nick Barratt-Boyes opted to build 3 copper-clad structures that from the outside look like a trio of boulders.

Located on a purpose-built, manmade island off the coast of downtown Osaka, Japan this mega-hub took over all international and some domestic flights once handled by the city’s Itami Airport. Created by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Renzo Piano, the ultra-modern, mile-long terminal resembles the interior of an airplane fuselage with corridors shooting out like wings from the main hallway.

This terminal in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia is only in operation during hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca that takes place in the last month of the year. This temporary open-air terminal is covered with 210 white fiberglass tents that help cool the desert air by as much as 50 degrees without air-conditioning.