Runway modeler: Airport architect Sameedha Mahajan on sending ever-more people skyward

In this installment of “Jet Fuel” — er, “Design Juice” — the first-gen immigrant and second-gen architect says the best airports for our brave new world will blend wayfinding, cultural context, and, sometimes, a smaller footprint.

We ground-bound humans love winging about.

Global air travel has not only rebounded from peak-pandemic plunges, but also hit record-high demand last year, up 10.4% from 2023 and 3.8% from 2019. That means an estimated 4.9 billion people — just under 60% of the world’s population — took to the skies in 2024. 

Even more will likely be aloft soon.

Worldwide, passengers stand to increase by 3.8% per year on average, says the International Air Transport Association (IATA), buoyed by factors like steadily declining inflation-adjusted air fares, normalizing supply chains, and ongoing economic recovery. All told, we can expect over four billion additional passenger journeys in 2043 compared to 2023, IATA projects.

But balancing all that growth with accessibility, sustainability, and safety will require blue-sky thinkers who aren’t afraid of some mighty headwinds — the likes of which include widening war zones, congested airways, and the industry’s turbulent journey to net-zero CO2 emissions by 2050.

Emerging aviation architect Sameedha Mahajan is up to the task. Flight has shaped her journey, both as an immigrant and a designer.

Mahajan earned her bachelor’s degree in architecture from University of Mumbai and worked for several years in her native country India before moving to the U.S. to pursue a master’s in urban design. Since graduating from Carnegie Mellon University in 2021, she’s carved out a niche for herself in aviation, collaborating on some half-dozen airport projects in the past few years. This work has run the gamut from renovations and “very quick, prefabricated designs for runway infrastructure” to new-terminal construction and master planning for an airport campus.

Always, she’s awed by the magnitude.

“What draws me to aviation architecture most is the scale, the complexity, and just how many different things you have to coordinate,” Mahajan says. “Different firms involved might have different design ideologies, so how do you agree upon one and follow the same vision?”

Currently, she works as a coordinator in architectural firm HDR’s Pittsburgh office and is pursuing U.S. licensure. She recently received her O-1 visa, which grants more workplace and project flexibility than the H-1B visa — a gift in this geopolitical moment. Ahead, she tells Design Observer about charting the future of air travel and making her way in places designed for taking flight.

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity. 

Delaney Rebernik: Tell me about your design journey.

Sameedha Mahajan: My father has been a big part in why I chose the field of architecture. He is an architect and an urban designer himself, so I was exposed to drawing, to the office environment, from a very early age.

And growing up in India, I was also exposed to a huge variety of urban conditions. I realized how much the built environment affects people, their behaviors, how they grow up. So I could see how poor people live in these overcrowded, informal settlements. I could see how the really rich live in these super fancy and really well-designed localities, which are almost like cities themselves — they’re completely self-sufficient.

It really planted the seed in my head, how having a good design can better people’s lives in so many ways. It can make them healthier; it can broaden their horizons in terms of access to public facilities; it can give them good access to neighborhood parks, to healthcare facilities, to good schools. So studying the larger impact of the built environment on people, and the interaction between them, is something that I was always interested in.

DR: And aviation?

SM: Air travel generally across the globe is on the rise because more and more people are able to afford it now, which means that airports are very important as these gateways into countries. And when it comes to the design of airports, they’re very interesting because they have to be generic in terms of wayfinding, in terms of signage, in terms of people just understanding, “Okay, I have to go from point A to point B in the shortest amount of time.” So they’re very generic in a way, but also, they can be very specific in terms of the context.

For example, airport design needs to reflect the identity of the place it is from, so that is where this contextual design comes into play. Balancing this generic design that resonates with all travelers, irrespective of language, and the contextual design, which has to make the airport a very special building rooted in the local traditions — that interplay is very interesting.

DR: Super interesting. What are your favorite examples of contextual design in airports?

SM: In terms of Indian airports, Bangalore [now Bengaluru] was historically the Garden City of India, so in the design of the airport, they’ve really tried to get the outdoors inside. They’ve tried to incorporate these biophilic elements, to introduce indoor greenery into the airport. And Varanasi is this historic, religiously very important destination to [Hindus], so there, they’ve tried to incorporate the elements of a temple into the design.

It’s very interesting to see how these airports were designed because they have to be technically efficient, but then at the same time, they have to incorporate all these elements that the locals resonate with.

DR: It strikes me that the airport is a fitting metaphor for your own journey, both as a designer and an immigrant. What’s it like being an Indian architect working in the U.S., especially in the current political climate? I know it’s a loaded question.

SM: Yeah, that’s a very critical one, though. I will be honest — finding jobs as an immigrant has been really difficult. As a student, it’s really easy because you’re there on a student visa, but when you want to shift to a work visa, you need your employer to sponsor you, and many firms may not be willing to do that because it’s a costly process, which is fair enough on the part of the firm hiring you.

But also, there are a lot of technicalities involved. When I was looking for jobs right out of college, I faced a lot of rejections simply because I need sponsorship as an immigrant. So I think finding jobs has historically been difficult for immigrant designers overall, and this is something that not just me, but also my friends have faced.

The other part is the licensure process. I have a bachelor’s in architecture from India, which means that I am licensed to work as an architect in India, but that license is not transferable in the U.S., which means in order to gain licensure over here, I need to gain around 3,700 hours of work experience and go through these six grueling exams. So I’m currently in that process because I’m very certain that I want to be licensed and work in the U.S.

DR: Yet, you’ve somehow managed to work on half a dozen airport projects while going through this grueling process. Which are you proudest of?

SM: I have been involved in the design for the new terminal construction for the Pittsburgh airport, which is set to open this fall. We’re almost done with the construction, and that was actually my very first aviation project, so it has this special place in my heart.

DR: And in terms of what’s next, what are you seeing on the innovation front?

SM: I’ve noticed that since the COVID pandemic, a lot of touchless technology has been integrated into airport design. You can see that in something as simple as a soap dispenser, where the touchless soap dispensers are on the rise just generally. There’s also a higher number of check-ins that can happen without human contact.

And there’s a very big push toward net-zero design. We see the integration of better carbon footprint materials into the design. We see the integration of a large number of solar panels and renewable energy sources into running airports. Passive design techniques have been around, but now it is also the integration of these very active elements through material choices, through technology integration in terms of roofing panels, in terms of window facades, like how open they should be depending on the daylight. So it’s all these different factors that are being implemented, even in airport design.

DR: With all this innovation and demand, what do aspiring aviation designers need to know to succeed?

SM: The architecture industry is at an inflection point. It’s no longer about just form and function. Architecture is involved with policy changes, with politics, with economics, with technology integration, with climate resilience. So there’s a lot of things that architects have to address now, and that is also the case with aviation design.

Personally, I wouldn’t say that AI is going to replace designers or architects soon, but I would say to any emerging designers that having knowledge of things like computational design or parametric design or leveraging these different tools of AI, would give them a competitive edge in the industry. And even if it is not in terms of technology, just with the current emphasis being given to climate resilience and sustainability, having specific knowledge of those areas is also going to be very crucial.

To designers who do not wish to be tied down to a particular field, I would say that having knowledge of how cross-disciplinary design works, and how to collaborate with all these different designers and look at the problem-solving picture is really going to be helpful. Architecture is no longer just about traditional design, but it is about addressing all these different, complex problems that we see currently.

Editor’s note: The original version of this story contained an inaccuracy about the Pittsburgh airport project and has been updated.