Terminal 3 of Shenzhen Bao'an International Airport, which cost upwards of 7.21 billion yuan ($1.16 billion) to construct, is leaking.
According to the Telegraph, only five months after the opening of the brand new terminal, heavy storms in southern China have led to it becoming a "waterlogged cave".
Photos posted on Weibo showed cascades of water pouring into the airport carpark, which flooded to a depth of over 0.15m (0.5 feet).
"We found more than 20 leaks, but they were not in the main departure or arrival halls. They did not affect normal operations," Yang Haibin, general manager of Shenzhen Airport Group, told the newspaper.
A spokesman for Studio Fuksas, the Rome-based architectural firm which designed the terminal, said there had been "extreme weather conditions" which had also put "metro stations and shopping malls under water".
"Hundreds of flights have been cancelled and it caused 25 deaths," the firm said. "No major damage has been reported in the new Shenzhen terminal 3.
The building was tested many times at the design and construction stages for water penetration and passed all the necessary criteria. We note that the terminal building has not experienced significant leakages despite unprecedented weather conditions."
Chinese state media blamed the design of the building for the leaks, particularly the more than 38,000 skylights installed in the terminal's roof.
"Every skylight has six edges, which could all possibly lead to leaks. So leakage could happen at more than 200,000 points in the terminal," Huang He, chief architect of the Beijing Institute of Architectural Design told China Daily.
Shenzhen wasn't the only city affected by recent storms, in Hong Kong malls and MTR stations flooded as the city raised its Black Rainstorm warning for only the second time in two years.
[Images via Weibo]
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