The pyramid of peace: Norman Foster assumes the monumental mantle of Boullιe. In Kazakhstan.
Text © Hugh Pearman. Cutaway graphic © Julian Osbaldstone/Sunday Times graphics. Cross-section and site model © Foster and Partners. Boullιe drawing courtesy of the Bibliothθque Nationale de France.
A much expanded version of the news story first published exclusively in The Sunday Times, London, February 20 2005.
A much expanded version of the news story first published exclusively in The Sunday Times, London, February 20 2005.
It will be one of the modern wonders of the world. A great pyramid, set in a brand-new capital city on the central Asian steppes. A pyramid that is to be a global centre for religious understanding, a symbol of world peace. It has more space inside than London's St. Paul's Cathedral, or Istanbul's Hagia Sophia. Sounds fanciful? They start building it next month - March 2005. It will open in June 2006. It is designed by Britain's Norman Foster.
Lord Foster, 69, has designed some audacious buildings in his time, from the much-loved "Gherkin" tower in London to Beijing's new airport - right now the world's biggest construction site. He has designed - but never built - the world's tallest towers. He even survived London's "wobbly bridge" embarrassment. But nothing he has done to date compares with this latest job. Because nobody asks for buildings like this. Unless you happen to be President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan.
With a massive oil, gas and mineral industry behind him, investors falling over themselves to catch his eye, and not much by way of political opposition, Nazarbayev can build whatever he wants in his showpiece new capital of Astana, being built according to a monumentally axial 1998 Kisho Kurokawa masterplan. And what Nazarbayev wants is religious and ethnic reconciliation.
He also wants an opera house to rival Glyndebourne or Covent Garden, a national museum of culture, a new "university of civilisation", and a centre for Kazakhstan's ethnic and geographical groups. All these will be slotted into Foster's pyramid, which is 203 feet tall and 203 feet square at the base (62m by 62m). It is raised higher by being set on a broad podium (315 feet square or 96 by 96 metres) roughly 50 feet high surrounded by an earth berm. This podium contains the opera house.
With a massive oil, gas and mineral industry behind him, investors falling over themselves to catch his eye, and not much by way of political opposition, Nazarbayev can build whatever he wants in his showpiece new capital of Astana, being built according to a monumentally axial 1998 Kisho Kurokawa masterplan. And what Nazarbayev wants is religious and ethnic reconciliation.
He also wants an opera house to rival Glyndebourne or Covent Garden, a national museum of culture, a new "university of civilisation", and a centre for Kazakhstan's ethnic and geographical groups. All these will be slotted into Foster's pyramid, which is 203 feet tall and 203 feet square at the base (62m by 62m). It is raised higher by being set on a broad podium (315 feet square or 96 by 96 metres) roughly 50 feet high surrounded by an earth berm. This podium contains the opera house.
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Gabion: The pyramid of peace: Norman Foster assumes the monumental mantle of Boullιe. In Kazakhstan.
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