Foster + Partners’ Mexico City Airport has been cancelled

Foster + Partners’ ambitious Mexico City Airport project has officially been cancelled after 70% of voters (only 1.2% of registered voters turned out) rejected the project. The new plan is to keep the existing airport and add a terminal and two runways to a military base north of Mexico City, according to The Wall Street Journal.

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The original plans called for a 555,000 sm facility that would have become one of the largest airports in the world. It was also designed to be the most sustainable airport in the world, as the single terminal, which would have been enclosed within a continuous lightweight gridshell, would have used fewer materials and less energy than a cluster of buildings.

Mexico’s President-elect, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, suggested the partly-built airport structure could be repurposed as a sports and ecological center.