Step off a plane at Western Sydney International Airport (WSI) and the first thing you notice is not the terminal, it is the light, and the landscape around it. Whether stepping off the plane or onto the kerbside dropoff, the connection to this timeless place continues into the terminals light filled, warm and calm interiors.  

For Woods Bagot, preserving that connection to the landscape and the land became a central focus over more than five years of design development and delivery. 

As Lead Design & Delivery Architect, working alongside Multiplex, Woods Bagot developed the reference design by ZHA Architects and COX Architecture into the finished airport that opens later this month. The work spanned across the architecture and interiors, requiring thousands of decisions to balance design intent, operational performance, sustainability and passenger experience. 

The biggest of those decisions reshaped the building itself, by lifting the roof line, expanding view lines, and redesigning passenger flows and sequencing so the terminal can adapt as it grows.  

Each was made with the same aim – to keep passengers connected to the landscape, the light and the identity of Western Sydney throughout their journey. 

Western Sydney’s first 

The airport was once described as Sydney’s second, a relief valve for Kingsford Smith. For the team who designed and delivered it, that framing misses the point. 

“It’s Western Sydney’s first airport,” says Sarah Kay, Woods Bagot CEO and Project Director for WSI. “That changes how you design it. You’re not building overflow for somewhere else. You’re building a front door for Western Sydney’s two million residents, and for everyone beyond it. For a lot of people it will be where they say goodbye and where they come home.” 

That ambition is embedded throughout the building. The design draws inspiration from the Cumberland Plain and the Blue Mountains, the region’s waterways, expansive skies and unique horizons, and the stories of Dharug Country. Throughout delivery, Woods Bagot focused on protecting and strengthening those connections, keeping the airport grounded in its location. 

Materiality became a key part of that process. Sandstone walls draw on the geology and colours of Western Sydney, while the broader palette responds to the region’s clay, grasses, bark and sky. Deep ochres and earth tones reference the stratified landscape of the Cumberland Plain. 

“One of the great risks on a project of this scale is that it starts to lose its connection to place,” says Neil Hill, Woods Bagot Principal and Lead Architect on WSI. “Our role was making sure that relationship remained visible in the details, the materials, the views and the experience of moving through the building.” 

That thinking extends to the terminal’s elegant pavilion form, where wide roof overhangs shade all sides of the building. 

Inspired by the homesteads and agricultural buildings that once dotted the site and the wider region, the expansive verandah creates a threshold between landscape and terminal. It provides shelter and shade, and a gradual transition into the airport beyond. 

“It’s a familiar Australian idea reinterpreted at a very different scale,” says Hill. “It helps create a sense of arrival before you’ve even entered the building.” 

Shaping the journey

Airports are among the most complex building types in the world. Every journey depends on security, border processing, baggage handling, aviation planning, technology infrastructure, retail and operations working together as a single system.

The people moving through that system are complex too. Every journey means something different to the person taking it, whether a first trip overseas, a homecoming or a long-awaited reunion. The design team shaped spaces that give each of those moments room, with a calm, cohesive feel throughout.

“One of the questions we kept returning to was how to make something incredibly sophisticated feel simple,” says Kay. “People shouldn’t have to stop and work out where they’re going next. They should feel confident moving through the building.”

The terminal is organised as a sequence of clearly defined stages, from forecourt to check-in, security and departure lounges, supported by long sightlines and clear circulation. The aim was an airport that feels easy to use, whether someone is a frequent flyer or travelling for the first time.

Natural light plays an important role in that experience. A refined skylight strategy draws daylight deep into the building, helping passengers understand where they are while keeping a visual relationship with the environment beyond.

“Passengers rarely remember individual design details,” says Hill. “They remember how a place made them feel. Light, views and spatial clarity all help create confidence and orientation without asking people to think about it.”

Less material, more place

Across the project, the delivery team reduced the volume and weight of concrete and steel against the reference scheme, contributing to an estimated 20 per cent reduction in embodied carbon. Operational energy consumption is projected to fall by 10 to 20 per cent through passive design, services optimisation and advanced controls.

One example is the fixed link bridges, the elevated walkways that connect aircraft to the terminal.

“The reference bridge designs arrived at the terminal as large enclosed forms,” says Hill. “Through replanning them, we created a tapered form that is a distinctive feature of the terminals airside architecture, reducing, we reduced material use by 30 per cent, improved operational flexibility and created a much stronger visual connection to the Cumberland Plain and the wider region.”

Many of those outcomes also improve the passenger experience. The revised skylight approach, enhanced shading and stronger visual connections contribute to sustainability, comfort and spatial quality at once.

“Good design shouldn’t force a choice between sustainability, functionality and experience,” says Hill. “The strongest outcomes happen when all three are working together.”

Complete at 10 million, ready for 80

Western Sydney International’s first stage is designed for around 10 million passengers a year. It has been masterplanned to grow beyond 80 million over time, eventually becoming one of Australia’s largest aviation gateways.

That required a different way of thinking. The airport needed to feel complete on opening day while remaining adaptable enough to evolve for decades to come.

When the terminal was designed, the mix of domestic and international passengers was unknown and no airlines had signed on. The response was to build in flexibility. Swing gates and swing baggage belts can switch between domestic and international flights. Cores and voids were relocated to allow for a single departures lounge in the future.

“You’re designing for the passenger arriving on day one and the airport it will become in forty years,” says Kay. “Both have to be right.”

No single organisation

The terminal was delivered by a team of hundreds of specialists across design, engineering, construction and operations, with more than 270 subcontractors and suppliers contributing.

“No single organisation delivers an airport,” says Kay. “Success comes from bringing design, engineering, construction and operational expertise together, and never losing focus on the passenger.”

For Woods Bagot, the project is a defining contribution to one of Australia’s most significant pieces of recent public infrastructure, and reinforces the practice’s growing expertise in aviation and transport design.

On 25 October, the first passengers will walk across those bridges and into the terminal. They will move beneath the verandah, through sandstone-lined spaces and into a building shaped by light, landscape and long views to the Cumberland Plain beyond.

Few will stop to think about why those moments feel the way they do.

“That’s the point,” says Hill. “If we’ve done our job well, the experience will feel effortless. People may not stop to notice the architecture, but they’ll feel connected to where they are.”

A long time coming

Western Sydney International is the first major greenfield airport built in Australia in more than 50 years, since Melbourne’s Tullamarine opened in 1970. For the site itself, the wait has been almost as long.

Badgerys Creek was first identified as a preferred location for a Western Sydney Airport in a 1979 study. In 1986 the Commonwealth selected the site and began acquiring around 1,700 hectares of largely rural land. Over the decades that followed, through studies, policy reversals and public debate, the land was held in reserve. The site was confirmed in 2014, and construction began in 2018.

Woods Bagot joined the project in 2020 and has spent more than six years developing, designing and delivering the terminal.

“People have been waiting for this airport for a very long time,” says Kay. “Our five years are a small part of that story. But we felt a real responsibility to make it worth the wait.”

Western Sydney International received the Award for Public Architecture at the 2026 NSW Australian Institute of Architecture Awards and is a 2026 World Architecture Festival finalist (Completed Buildings: Transport).