Expo-2017, like the rest of the World Exhibitions of the early 21st century, is an interesting phenomenon in itself. In the era of overdeveloped global communications, it is difficult to imagine that for information about the achievements of different countries of the world you need to move in space and that, in principle, you need a physical embodiment of this information in the form of an exhibition. However, the Expo continues to be held, not only in developing countries, but also in post-industrial Milan (2015). And together with the Expo (which, by the way, for various reasons, did not work out for the Italians at all), an interesting typology of space for a mass celebration with spectacular architecture, competing with the exhibits for the attention of the public, remains. And this is not only VDNKh (even if only all-Union expositions were held there) - but the Crystal Palace of the very first World Exhibition, the Columbus Exhibition in Chicago in 1893, whose huge and magnificent buildings influenced the architecture and urban planning of the United States for many years, a competition in the greatest modernity »In Montreal, Osaka, etc. Tastes and times changed, but the emotionally uplifted, “festive” image of the exhibition complexes remained. It fully manifested itself in Astana, in the ensemble designed by the authors of the Burj Khalifa, Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture (we wrote in detail about their victory in the competition in 2013).
They own a convincing and high-quality solution to the task - very complex both functionally (almost 4 million visitors in three months of work) and formally - it was important to find a universally understandable architectural language. The exhibition area (25 hectares) received the expected center of gravity in the form of the pavilion of Kazakhstan with a huge sphere "Nur-Alem", the subject of universal delight and surprise (quite in the spirit of the entire history of the World Exhibitions). His entourage consisted of thematic, corporate and international corps (the latter housed expositions of the participating countries) - at the same time modern and restrained, with a clear and easy-to-navigate plan and a recognizable general style. This practicality in the best sense of the word is quite in the spirit of the SOM bureau, in the depths of which Adrian Smith spent most of his professional life and designed the Burj Khalifa. The result was a new metropolitan area (174 hectares), which took an empty space between the city center and Nazarbayev University - from the airport. An important role here was played by the strategic decision to entrust the entire complex to one architectural workshop, which at the same time developed a scheme for the use of the Expo zone after 2017, and not follow the morally outdated and very non-environmentally friendly line "each country has a pavilion", as was the case in Shanghai in 2010 … The project budget was $ 1.3 billion, in total, buildings with a total area of 1.2 million m2 were implemented2.
The museum of the future in the "Nur-Alem" sphere, like the thematic pavilions, will in the near future turn into an educational scientific center: their exposition is designed for subsequent use (we
published an interview with its author Raid Sabba). Art and congress centers will continue to operate in the same original quality. The rest of the buildings will house the International Financial Center, a center for the development of "green" technologies and investments, a technology park for IT startups, and an educational center. Part of the space will be used for commercial exhibitions. Separately, it is worth mentioning a residential area with 4,400 apartments (AS + GG was no longer responsible for its appearance) and a hotel.
Since the theme of Expo-2017 was "Energy of the Future", numerous eco-components were initially included in the project of its complex. In particular, a smart city scheme was introduced, which allowed to save 30% of the electricity required for the functioning of the exhibition thanks to the Smart Grid system (50 substations; in the future, other districts of Astana can be connected to it), a unified network management system for the entire complex, intelligent city lighting with motion sensors. Two wind turbines at "Nur-Alem" and photovoltaic cells in the form of a special station, small architectural forms and at the pavilion "Nur-Alem" as a whole developed 72 MWh during the 93 days of the exhibition.
But the Expo's contribution to the development of the Kazakhstani construction industry was not limited to eco-technologies. Nur-Alem, which was conceived and became the largest spherical building in the world, demanded great efforts from the engineers and builders of the Turkish company Sembol, which was implementing the project, which, however, provided valuable experience for solving future problems. Due to time constraints, construction was carried out all year round, although in winter in Astana the temperature can drop below minus 40 degrees. One of the consequences of this was the impossibility of driving piles directly into the ground: for them, “vents” were pre-drilled in the ground.
A separate problem was the shape of the building itself (almost a regular sphere 92.5 m high and 80 m wide): for all the reliability of such a structure in its finished form, during installation it is very unstable until the very end of the process, and the matter was aggravated by the fact that simultaneously with the frame covering the shell was the installation of the glass shell, which made it heavier and thereby increased the risk of collapse (this measure was also caused by the lack of time). Also ambitious and therefore especially difficult was the task of erecting a smooth sphere - that is, from curved glass panels (most spherical buildings are lined with flat glass fragments, which gives them a faceted appearance like a geodesic dome): the only departure from this smoothness is in the upper part of the sphere, where installed wind turbines and solar panels. About the construction process of Nur-Alem and Expo-2017 as a whole, the National Geographic TV channel made a documentary film "Astana: the city of the future".
