President Nazarbayev sent the Army to help get the building completed on schedule.Īfter dinner, Marat drove me back across the frozen Ishim River to the apartment I’d rented in the new part of town. The top floor of the Palace of Peace is a conference room bathed in natural light. “The only reason he didn’t conquer the rest of Europe was he didn’t think it was good grazing land for his horses,” Marat said. Recently, Genghis Khan, whose armies conquered this part of the world in the thirteenth century, has been enjoying a popular resurgence as a proto-Kazakh, and Marat spoke warmly of him.
Kazakhs are east-central Asian, meaning that they more or less resemble the inhabitants of Mongolia (and a dozen other nearby and not-so-nearby places, including, to some extent, Kyrgyzstan and Yakutia) they speak a Turkic language, mildly worship Allah, write in a modified Cyrillic, and drive Nissans. We discussed Kazakh democracy (developing), the geographical position of Kazakhstan on a map of the world (in the very center), and the contributions of the Kazakh people to world history (significant). We had met while playing hockey at a small outdoor rink in the old, Soviet part of town, and then had gone to Marat’s place to eat horse meatballs and plov and drink endless cups of tea with his family. My favorite tour of all was courtesy of a Kazakh friend I will call Marat, a lawyer.
#IN LIVING COLOR MILLION DOLLAR PYRAMID DRIVER#
“A giant, low-slung, predatory-” “It’s a bicycle helmet,” the taxi driver said, and, yes, this made more sense.) You tour the city from the observation deck of Bayterek, a weird white structure that resembles a giant badminton birdie, with a golden bird’s egg on top you tour it from the seat of every bus that takes the long, circuitous way through town because there aren’t yet enough bus routes. (“It’s like a bug,” I ventured of the velodrome. You tour it in the cab from the airport, passing the gleaming new English-language Nazarbayev University and then the new soccer stadium, speed-skating track, and ten-thousand-seat velodrome. It was a fitting present for Kazakhstan’s leader, Nursultan Nazarbayev, who turned seventy the next day, and who had constructed this entire city, ex nihilo, in the middle of the Kazakh steppe.Īstana is a government city, not a tourist city, but all you do is tour it. The Presidents of many countries, including countries that hate one another, came to the opening ceremony, last July 5th. A whole separate structure had to be built to perform this feat when it was done, an international squadron of mountaineers arrived to run hundreds of cables from the base of the tripod to the top, before hanging the ETFE on them. The beams had been assembled on the ground now they weighed two thousand tons and had to be hoisted simultaneously and brought together at their highest points so that they could support one another. Khan Shatyr was built on a less exigent schedule, but it was still helped along: customs officials opened an office at the construction site in order to save time at the border visas were expedited.įor Sembol, the trickiest part was lifting the three giant steel beams that hold up the Khan Shatyr. The government of Kazakhstan is not without its own rules and regulations, but as Nigel Dancey, of Foster and Partners, put it to me, “You’re presenting to the President, he shakes your hand, you make a decision, and the process is very quick.” To speed the construction of the other Foster building in Astana, the Palace of Peace and Reconciliation, the President sent the Army. “In Turkmenistan there are many regulations. “Drivers do not like going through Turkmenistan,” Demir said. The most direct overland route went through northern Iran and then Turkmenistan, but it had a drawback. The Turkish company Sembol did the construction, so most parts of the giant tent were routed through Turkey. Khan Shatyr is Kazakh for “King of the Tents.” It was designed by Foster and Partners, the firm of Norman Foster, who is known for his ability to put flesh (or, at least, ETFE) on the theoretical postulates of postmodern architecture. A genial, bearded Turk in his mid-thirties, Demir has limited English and chooses his words carefully.
“Yes!” said Caner Demir, who was the head of on-site logistics for the final phase of the Khan Shatyr project. Kazakhstan’s President, Nursultan Nazarbayev, has had Astana constructed in the middle of the steppe, to replace the country’s previous capital. The Palace of Peace and Reconciliation, one of two Norman Foster buildings, in Astana.