Ready for take off: Israel's new international gateway brings striking architecture and new...

Late last year, as an El Al airliner taxied out from Ben Gurion Airport Terminal 3 en route to New York, Harold Kia could not help but see the event--the first such departure from Tel Aviv's new $1 billion terminal in Tel Aviv--as symbolic of a remarkable personal journey.

"It's been a great ride," said Kia, of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill's New York office. He made Israel his home while serving as lead architect for three of the nine years it took an international team to replace the original terminal built by the British in 1937.

Engineer Ashok Raiji, head