South Korea aims to become the travel hub of Asia with the debut this month of its Inchon International Airport. The so-called Winged City, which reportedly cost $8 billion, can handle 27 million passengers annually - 2 million more than the megaports serving nearby Tokyo and Osaka, Japan. The complex sits on a 16-square-mile landfill island, and its steel-and-glass main terminal is the largest public building in the country. Size aside, Inchon has brains. Video sensors log the arriving and departing flights at each gate. A centralized network integrates data from all airlines to avoid potential problems caused by gate changes and the like. Planners hope this will mean passengers spend less time on the tarmac and more time in the Red Carpet lounge. Your suitcase, however, will be delivered the old-fashioned way. "We opted not to do the baggage," says Curt Fentress, Inchon's principal architect and the design mind behind Denver International, where the notorious luggage fiasco taught him that sometimes more tech is less.
ELECTRIC WORD
New Weave
Star Market
Swing Theory
Super Conductor
Jetropolis
Time Sync
