The travels of Comrade Stallan

25 Jun 2009

Kazakhstan the former Soviet republic and birthplace of Borat, has become a destination for some top Scottish architects including RMJM, as its European director Paul Stallan reports.

I am looking out the window of the Intercontinental Hotel in Almaty and cursing myself at my stupidity for choosing to come to Kazakhstan to consider a new design project.  It's the coldest place I have ever been. I arrived at the airport in my t-shirt and ginos to experience six foot of snow. I failed (as usual) to adequately prepare my wardrobe and do any research on the Kazak climate.

Basically it is minus 40¡C in the winter and plus 40¡C in the summer. My travel colleague Alistair has no sympathy and as ever he is super organised.

We are in Almaty the largest city in Kazakhstan to consider a new urban design project for an ambitious mixed use project although we have just found out that we are likely to be in competition with London's Ian Ritchie. Our client contact tells us not to worry however as he has many many opportunities!

We did learn prior to coming that Almaty is famous for its abundance of apple trees which blossom in spring, the word 'Almaty' literally meaning in Kazak the 'City of Apples', although through the snow blizzard it is pretty hard to see any apple trees. Everything is grey white.

After a night's sleep I am feeling more human and less on edge, the snow has cleared and there is a blue sky. I am beginning to absorb in a more optimistic way the weirdness of Kazakhstan.

We have an early meeting with our client Erdal who turns out to be this super cool Turkish chap who is Mr Connected. We have a couple of cigars for breakfast and jump in his expensive gangster mobile to go look at our site and take in the city.
Almaty appears to be booming!

It transpires that you cannot buy a 60-year old '1 bed flat' in an ex-soviet slab block for less than £300k and that's without a balcony. The city has sustained growth for over 100 years with the support of a strict gridded street pattern, a pattern that is enhanced by wonderfully wide tree lined boulevards. The blocks are however very large averaging at around 500m in depth. The city, a legacy of Russian town planning where everything seems scaled up, is well placed for more scaling up thanks to the buoyant emergent economy of the Greater Kazakhstan.

Erdal is the property front for the Kazak Gold Family. I joked with Alistair that the family's offices would be gold. Their offices were gold. The Gold clients turn out to be great fun, basically first generation miners.

Erdal is good council to the family and has an incredible C.V. having worked internationally as a development manager on prominent projects with some of the world's best architects. He has just delivered a project locally with New York's SOM, which is about  1,000,000m?. We learn from Erdal that Zaha has an Almaty project on the drawing board, as does Eric Owen Moss although generally there are more US architects like NBBJ working on the bigger mixed use schemes. There are apparently no Kazak architects in the city although there are engineering firms which is just as well because we are in a serious seismic zone. We learn that columns have to be 1.5 metres thick at 3 metre centres with separating construction joints every 6 metres. Everything is over engineered.

After much discussion we are asked to consider two sites - one fantastic urban site in the middle of the political and financial quarter and the other at the foot of the mountains. The snow capped mountains that surround the city are truly spectacular. I can see them know the snow has stopped.

Wow.

Both sites are challenging, the urban site is for about 100,000m? of mixed use although primarily class A office use. The development works out to be in the region of 15 storeys high with a ground and first retail base. There is also a requirement for a 40-50 storey hotel and residential tower on what is a prominent corner overlooking a vast public park. Alistair and I work through the night at the hotel to generate a series of site responses and alternative development diagrams to impress upon our client our eagerness. We are genuinely excited by the brief and the urban environment we are working in.  

It transpires that the project is one of about 15 projects that the Kazak Gold family are considering with a view to establishing a new IPO vehicle to attract further global finance. An IPO being an Initial Public Offering which they will present to London's alternative investment market or AIM as it is known. It transpires that they have the U.S. branding company Pentagram and also Peter Murray of Wordsearch assembling the proposal, all of which is overseen by a company called Locum - the most incredible group of entrepreneurial property agents in the world (... in my view).  Locum is well established in Kazakhstan and through our close relationship with them we have found ourselves in the kookiest places.

Our relationship with Locum as it has developed is reciprocal in that we often ask their council on the stability of a new region we are exploring. We have consulted with them on working in Albania, Croatia, Georgia, Bratislava, Latvia as well as the other 'stans' of which there are a few.

Over the coming months both the team and I enjoy commuting back and forth to Almaty which leads to other projects and client introductions. Each time I go I like the city even more, helped by the onset of beautiful summer weather and the young culture. The city is incredibly green and lush and yes there are literally millions of apple orchards within and surrounding the city. One of the sites we consider for an 'uber luxury' residential project is near the mountains, another is the redevelopment of a former Russian Political Sanatorium, which up until fairly recently was still used by the Muscovite power players like Putin.

Working with our Global Education Studio we also have the opportunity to look at a new University Campus for the City. Kazakhstan's educational system is weak with most young people having to leave the country and study in either St Petersburg or the U.S. We are again competing this time with Rem Koolhaas who is looking at new student settlement on the edges of the city in a very rural setting whilst we are looking at the integration of a campus as part of a New Town project beside the expanding Central Asian Airport Hub. This new airport city masterplan is a project we are developing with our client who is 26 years old and who reportedly owns the airport!

As well as being interested in the 'new' we were also keen to research Almaty's indigenous architecture which is a beautiful fusion between European and Chinese influence; no surprise given Almaty is literally on the border with both China and Mongolia and is as far away from Moscow as you could possibly get. A flight from Moscow to Almaty will take you about seven hours which gives you some indication of the sheer scale of the former Soviet Union. Regional architecture is scarce however, as historically the Kazak people were nomadic. The famous Almaty Cathedral is an example of Kazak architecture and as if reflecting the Kazak character it is wonderfully colourful. The Cathedral is also reported to be the tallest timber structure in the world and one that seems to have survived more earthquakes than any other.

Kazakhstan is also larger than central Europe and is almost the size of Australia which most people find hard to fathom, yet despite this the country only has around 11 million people, 9 million of which live in the Almaty region with the other 2 million spread across a vast interior landscape. To address this phenomenon the Government have created a brand new city called Astana that was master planned by the Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa. Astana is much further north towards the Russian border and the Siberian Steppes and consequently its climate is even more extreme.

The country is strategically balancing its political and demographic spread to address its fascinating geography between Europe, Russia, China and Afghanistan.  A new pyramid shaped parliament building designed by Norman Foster takes centre stage in Astana, its form said to be a celebration of all world religions and ethnicity and a fitting metaphor for the Kazak populations acceptance of difference and choice, which is either very hippy really or a clever political front given you have two super powers on the doorstep and the melting pot that is the Middle East nearby.

The challenge architecturally is to try and find a regional architecture that is relevant and rooted in its place. There is definitely a Russian Soviet influence and legacy that is worth preserving. Some of the early 50s Russian architecture has great character although we got a strong sense that the Kazaks did not share our historic appreciation as their appetite for the new is all consuming. 

With regards to the legacy architecture of the city we were asked to look at the conversion of a former Russian Army hospital into offices. The building was about eight to nine storeys in height and dated from the late 50s early 60s. The building had a massive concrete frame with a plan depth of about 15 metres. The building had potential for office given the chronic lack of good space in this respect, however we advised that the conversion would not deliver space that would support a premium rent.

Our advice was to convert it into a boutique hotel given the hotel accommodation in the city was woeful. We tried to make a case that cultural tourism had value and that the city was attracting increasing numbers of European tourists interested in the location and in the outstanding skiing and snowboarding opportunities. 

The hospital was a time capsule with murals and photographs of the Russian army lining the walls. The building had a cinema space on the roof and also overlooked a stunning memorial park that was centred on a bronze sculpture the size of a tenement building. The site had definite destination potential.

 I tried to persuade our client, a very shrewd woman called Geisha, that I would personally do the work on the project in exchange for a huge bust of Lenin that we found in a stairwell. The Lenin head was super scale and would have looked great in my garden. Alistair however pointed out that some people might get the wrong idea; i.e. 'Stalin' (Stallan) with a massive sculpture of Lenin. He had a point. To settle things Geisha said she would like to discuss my proposal over diner and would take me to a local Japanese restaurant where the speciality was a naked woman covered in food and who lies flat across your table. I explained my chop stick skills were excellent.

In the end I settled for some really cool tank commander badges which on reflection did make me look like a crazy Marxist student rather than a discerning professional.

Going forward we have made good contacts in Kazakhstan and we are entirely confident that once the global markets recover the country will continue to renew its infrastructure. Even the emerging markets have been hit by the downturn due to a lack of financial liquidity, however the sheer raw potential of the country means investment will be inevitable. Our team really hope that the Kazak people retain a perspective on what makes Almaty unique.

Paul Stallan, RMJM International Principal &
RMJM European Design Director