With the duty-free alone featuring 71 stores and comprising 53,000sq m (the size of Windsor Castle), Istanbul Airport is expected to take in up to 200 million passengers each year.

With such a large selection of shops, there was bound to be an even larger need for signage – which Absen helped to accommodate.

The firm’s LED solutions were used in the installation of a 300-metre-long curved LED façade which follows the walkway through the duty-free area, as well as two 120sq m ceiling-mounted video screens which greet passengers at either end of the terminal.

Astel was chosen to oversee the project which unsurprisingly, wasn’t without challenges. Cilga Ozcelik, sales support manager at the firm explains: “From an LED perspective, a project of this scale was truly unprecedented.

“Many parts of it were challenging, particularly the non-standard, curved LED segments, because the architectural design of the Duty-free shopping façade was inspired by the Bosporus – the free-flowing water gateway that separates Europe with Asia.”

Another challenge was installing the video walls into the “non-standard architectural design” of the new airport. Selen Guler Arabaci, business development manager for Absen comments: “The ceilings at the airport are not able to take more than five tonnes of weight so Absen provided the lighted LED tiles available, without compromising the visual appearance.

“Astel also created a lighter bracket to mount the screens from. A specially designed motorised lift was then used to hoist and secure the video walls into position 8 metres above the ground. Having to install such a large amount of LED in such a secure environment and within a very limited four-month timeframe, was extremely challenging.”

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