Pittsburgh International Airport debuts the first of four outdoor terraces
When it debuted Nov. 18, 2025, the gleaming new $1.7 billion landside terminal at Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT) immediately improved the airport's security, baggage delivery and parking experiences. It also introduced new dining and shopping options and lots of fresh new art.
Designed by Gensler and HDR with Luis Vidal and Architects, the terminal vision also included a series of landscaped outdoor terraces that, PIT promised, would offer passengers "fresh air and a calm respite."
"Luis Vidal was really inspired by Fallingwater," explains PIT CEO Christina Cassotis. (Fallingwater is a house designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright in southwestern Pennsylvania.)
"He and the architecture team, including Gensler and the entire team, thought of nature as such an important feature because we have so much green here in Western Pennsylvania," she added.
On terminal opening day, the four terraces — two presecurity and two postsecurity — were still under construction, though.
Now, eight months after the new terminal opened, one of those much-anticipated terraces is celebrating its grand opening.
PIT's first terrace
The 36,000-square-foot terrace is on the arrivals level on the south side of the terminal near baggage claims 5 through 8. It's unusual among airport terraces in that it is open to both ticketed passengers and to community visitors.
The terrace features native and regional Western Pennsylvania plantings, open sightlines, accessible pathways, comfortable seating areas and art.
With this new terrace, "everybody who relies on this airport will have an opportunity to get closer to nature," Cassotis said. "Being able to be surrounded by plants and trees, it's a way for people to regulate their system, and it gives them an opportunity to watch planes takeoff and land. It's good for everyone's physical and mental health."
Designed to mimic a riverbed, with various walking paths and zones along the way, the terrace recreates the visual character of the Western Allegheny Plateau — a natural region defined by rolling terrain, river valleys and diverse ecosystems.
Planted areas are organized into zones and are intended to offer something new each season, featuring 41 plant species, including native trees, shrubs, grasses, ferns and flowering perennials. Look around, and you can see everything from American witch hazel, Virginia bluebells and Pennsylvania sedge to purple cornflower, Brown-eyed Susan, red maple and more.
The terrace is unusual for an airport because it has a corporate sponsor. The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, a major regional healthcare provider and insurer, sponsors PIT's first terrace, which is why it is called the UPMC Terrace. Sponsors for the airport's remaining three terraces have not yet been announced.
Even without the outdoor terraces completed, PIT's architecture and design recently earned it a spot on the 2026 list of the World's Most Beautiful Airports, an honor awarded by the France-based Prix Versailles.
But even as PIT celebrates the opening of the first of its four outdoor terraces, Cassotis acknowledges that the airport almost scrapped the idea.
"Prior to COVID-19, we were planning to value engineer the terraces out from the design. In a post-COVID-19 world, however, access to fresh air and the outdoors is an integral part of public health, and we have an obligation to make sure that is an option for travelers — so they were added back in," Cassotis said.
Terraces, patios and observation decks at other airports
PIT's new outdoor terrace may be the newest to open, but it's part of a welcome trend of airports bringing back outdoor patios and observation decks for all passengers.
In 2015, JetBlue opened an outdoor deck on top of Terminal 5 at John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) with a play area for kids, a pet relief area, and views of the Manhattan skyline and Eero Saarinen's TWA terminal (now the TWA Hotel).
San Francisco International Airport (SFO) opened a postsecurity outdoor terrace at the international terminal in February 2019 and added the presecurity SkyTerrace in February 2020.
Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) added a covered postsecurity airfield observation deck as part of the new C concourse expansion that opened in June 2026.
And the outdoor patio is one of the most celebrated features of the new Terminal 1 in San Diego International Airport (SAN). It opened in September 2025 and also earned a spot on the 2026 list of World's Most Beautiful Airports.
"San Diego's lifestyle happens outside, so we wanted the design of our new terminal to capture that," Hampton Brown, vice president and chief revenue officer of San Diego County Regional Airport Authority, said.
"Creating an outdoor patio with views of San Diego Bay, the downtown skyline and Coronado Bridge ... turns the final moments before a flight into an iconic, sun-drenched San Diego experience you simply cannot get anywhere else in the world," he added. "The smiles it generates are proof that the outdoor patio is a hit."