Dubbed the boat - at least that's what the blurb from the architect Dar Al-Handasah calls part of its design - the new airport at Egypt's tourist gateway at Sharm El-Sheikh does not look half bad.

Occasionally airport designs are worthy of note just because they do look striking - the UK's Southampton Airport had the same effect a few years ago.
I am not sure about a boat here at Sharm El-Sheikh, but my first impression was of one of those sandworm creatures from the Dune series of science fiction novels by Frank Herbert.
Inside the terminal things remain dramatic. There are "billowing" tent-like roofs inspired, it says, by the indigenous Beduin culture. The boat reference comes from it looking like two inverted hulls that sandwich the middle "boat", which houses passport control, duty free and restauarants.

For the geographically inclined, Sharm El-Sheikh is on the tip of the Sinai desert in Egypt looking over the Red Sea. Fantastic scuba diving apparently.

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