The new VIP Terminal at the Malta International Airport offers an alternative to the main terminal experience – allowing travellers to bypass standard airport procedures in favour of a quieter, more personal journey.

Located just metres from the runway, the VIP Terminal at Malta International Airport has long operated as a detached building with two wings: the west wing dedicated to Commercially Important Persons (CIP) and the east for Ministerial and Diplomatic use. The project brief called for the demolition and reconstruction of the CIP terminal to expand its capacity – whilst retaining the east wing.

The design was guided by a clear intention: To create a strong sense of place. Travellers were to immediately recognise that they had arrived in Malta. The architecture is elemental: thick stone walls, rough plaster, and filtered daylight. These are not generic luxury materials, but ones that speak authentically of Malta: sun-bleached, tactile, and enduring.

At ground-level, limestone walls give the terminal a presence rooted in the island’s architectural heritage. Above, a white plastered volume contrasts with the stone, offering calm and shelter to the spaces formed between the stone blocks below.

The former terminal’s stone structure was carefully deconstructed: its limestone blocks salvaged, sliced, and hand-textured using the traditional ‘mannarett’ chisel – a tool long used by Maltese stoneworkers. This gave the building a stone skin rich in texture and rhythm, while avoiding the environmental cost of new stone.

The recycled stone is central to the building’s identity: a clear demonstration of how Malta’s precious stone, too often sent to landfill during demolition, can be elevated to meet the standards of a high-end architectural project. This is both a sustainable gesture and a cultural one, embedding the new terminal with the material memory of its predecessor.