Khan Shatyr Entertainment Centre by Foster + Partners

It wasn’t all that long ago that Norman Foster designed the Palace of Peace and Reconciliation in Kazakhstan, a striking pyramid dedicated to the renunciation of violence and the unification of the world’s religions. Now, with the recent grand opening of Khan Shatyr Entertainment Centre, Foster + Partners have designed two of the most prominent landmarks along Astana’s skyline. What this represents for the nation’s capital as one passes through the city, is a new civic shift from religious mythology towards entertainment and the arts, a powerful assertion that architecture is fast pushing Kazakhstan onto the world stage.

Now famed to be the world’s largest tensile structure soaring 150 metres high from a 200- metre elliptical base, the opening of the Khan Shatyr Entertainment Centre saw the world’s press and key Eastern European dignitaries gather at large for the special event timed to coincide with President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s 70th birthday and Day of Astana. Forming the highest peak on the Astana skyline, the structure encloses an area in excess of 100,000 square metres within an ETFE dome, boasting unencumbered views over the city and the steppes beyond. Foster + Partners have created a tent-like structure bringing immensurable value to the city, gathering a nation under its translucent canopy for a wide range of functions and activities within a climatic envelope that provides comfortable thermal conditions all year round.

Within the Khan Shatyr Entertainment Centre is an impressive urban-scaled park hosting a complete range of entertainment and leisure facilities, including restaurants, cafés, retail environments, cinemas and flexible spaces to accommodate for a varied program of events and exhibitions. What the structure expresses on the outside in structural ingenuity and finesse is reflected in the interior through an interesting interplay of forms in different levels that create undulating terraces, with the uppermost terrace playfully forming a water park. The functions of the building are so inherently broad, visitors will surprisingly find an artificial beach and a running track.

Due to the extreme polar climate of Astana (where temperatures can range from 35°C in the summer to -35°C in the winter), Foster + Partners implemented a tri-layer ETFE treatment of the structure’s enveloping surface. This unique, see-through plastic material allows for filtered daylight to bathe the interiors, whilst sheltering the structure’s occupants from the ephemeral extremes. Yet as ephemeral as the elements it protects its visitors from, the structure itself is dynamic. Air is pumped between the ETFE layers to form enormous inflated pillows, giving the façade a soft illusion of a large quilt.

The winter periods posed a key challenge for the architects to prevent the formation of ice on the inside of the structure, who ingeniously responded with solutions for thorough internal temperature monitoring and by directing warm air currents up the inner fabric surface. During the summer, fritting on the outermost foil layer provides solar shading, and vents on top of the tent structure can be opened to encourage stack effect ventilation, whilst low-level jets encourage cross ventilation, keeping air constantly cool across the space.

Whilst Khan Shatyr’s gigantic size makes it an architectural and engineering feat of innovation, at all scales it resembles something more heartfelt and allegorically regionalist. The people of Kazakhstan have come from a rich ancestry in tribes of yurt-dwelling nomads, where the traditional yurt is comprised of a single central pole that supports a wooden frame clad in felt. In similar principle, the construction of Khan Shatyr uses a cable net supported by a central mast that is clad with its ETFE material. Whilst there are slight differences in conventions, like the structure’s gentle slant and its elliptical base, the people of Kazakhstan now hold dear a new national monument drawn from the oldest traditions.

Since becoming the Kazakh capital twelve years ago, the city of Astana has undergone an extraordinary boost in building program and innovation that has completely transformed itself and the nation. With Foster + Partners’ latest addition to the capital, the Khan Shatyr Entertainment Centre heroically defines itself, tapering and pinpointing to the heavens above from the grassland it rises. As a spectacular architectural and engineering achievement of social, cultural and civic value, the world’s largest tensile structure creates a very clear distinction in making the fantastical and impossible, possible. +

IMAGES Courtesy & Copyright of Foster + Partners

1. The grand opening of Khan Shatyr, now famed to be the largest tensile structure in the world, marked a night of celebrations and festivities for Kazakhstan’s capital, coinciding with Day of Astana and President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s 70th birthday. 2. The enveloping ETFE surface allows for immense daylight to pour into the interior spaces, with air pumped between its tri-layer composition, forming an illusion of a large quilt. 3. During the summer, vents on top of the tent can be opened to encourage stack effect ventilation, whilst low-level jets encourage cross ventilation. 4 & 5. The structure reaches to the sky in dizzying heights, soaring 150 metres from a 200-metre elliptical base.