Astana
Capital on the Steppe
Portrait
Nazarbayev moved the capital from Almaty in 1997 to a provincial town on the steppe where winter temperatures reach minus forty, and commissioned Foster, Kurokawa and others to build a new centre along a single ceremonial axis — a pyramid of peace, a tented shopping centre, a tower with a gilded handprint at the top. It has been renamed three times, and the argument about whether it is a city or a statement is unresolved.
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