One day, while on a typical portrait shoot in Bangkok, photographer Giulio Di Sturco stumbled across a remarkable idea for his next project. He was photographing John Kasarda, a famous academic and airport business consultant. "In the shoot brief I saw this word, 'aerotropolis,' and I had no idea what that word meant," he says. 

While photographing Kasarda, who coined the term "aerotropolis" in 2012, Di Sturco learned about the concept in full detail. "As soon as we started to speak, I asked him about aerotropolis, and he began to describe this new concept of the megalopolis, this new kind of smart city directly connected to the airport. It wasn't until the end of the conversation that I realized the he was actually the person who invented the word," he says. 

"I felt excited almost like never before—I wasn't thinking about the portrait anymore; I was imagining already a project about these new cities, this future