Grand ceremony marks opening of Palace of Peace and Reconciliation
Buro Happold responsible for structural engineering of 62m-high pyramid containing meeting space for global religious leaders and an opera house
Consulting engineer Buro Happold has provided the structural engineering design for the spectacular Palace of Peace and Reconciliation, officially opened on 1 September, in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan. The president of Kazakhstan opened the building, completed in time for the triennial Congress of Leaders of the World and Traditional Religions, a regular meeting of leaders of all the major faiths intended to promote religious tolerance.
The Congress was first held in September 2003 on the initiative of the president who, encouraged by the event’s success, decided it should be repeated triennially. As a result, the project has had an unusually fast design and construction time, of less than two years.
As well as providing an impressive meeting space for the Congress, the pyramid hosts a 1,500-seat opera house, conference facilities, part of the local university and a national centre for Kazakhstan’s various ethnic and geographical groups. These various spaces have been built around a central atrium, above which is a reception area lined with vegetation, dubbed the Hanging Gardens of Astana.
Buro Happold has been involved with the project from the outset, collaborating with world renowned architect Foster and Partners to develop a design that integrates architecture and structure in a way that is both practical and dramatic, while meeting the exceptionally tight deadline and working around the extreme climate of Astana.
The pyramid is 62m high, with a 62m by 62m base and has been designed in two parts: a concrete base building and the steel superstructure.
The base, which is partly below ground level, provides firm foundations and an enclosure for the opera house. The superstructure is made from prefabricated steel tubes arranged into inner and outer triangulated plates. The inherent stiffness of these makes the structure very robust and they will be connected to each other with cross members in the floor planes.
The structure is based on 12m-wide triangles, with five at the base, reducing to one at the top. At the base level, the steel creates stable, four-sided pyramids that transfer lateral loads and vertical loads to the basement and foundations. Above this level, the main accommodation floors are carried on steel floor beams spanning between primary beams which link the inner and outer plates.
George Keliris, project principal for Buro Happold, says: “One of the crucial aspects of the engineering of a steel pyramid was dealing with the expansion of the building under the huge variations of temperature in Kazakhstan. In winter it can fall to -30ºC and in summer exceed 30ºC.”
This will result in expansion of the steelwork by up to 30cm across the width of the building. “We decided to ‘float’ the pyramid on bearings so that it can expand and contract freely on the concrete base. But to stop it sliding off its base we secured the steelwork at one point on each face, in a way that let these points slide in and out while preventing them moving in line with the face. This was just enough to hold the pyramid still while letting it ‘breathe’,” says Keliris.
The inner and outer plates converge to create a stiff ring close to the top of the pyramid. This supports the uppermost glazed pyramid, which is made of smaller diameter tubular steel to give a more delicate appearance. The stained glass summit of the pyramid, which surrounds the meeting space, has been designed by renowned stained glass artist Brian Clarke and will create a unique light for the Congress.
“The end result is a truly spectacular building and a great example of our innovative engineering – in meeting both the structural challenges and in designing a construction programme that worked around the harsh climate while meeting a particularly tough deadline,” says Mike Cook, Buro Happold partner responsible for the project.
Prefabricated components were used where possible to work around the harsh Astanian winter. Steel components made in summer 2005 were assembled on site the following winter, allowing construction work to continue when the climate made pouring concrete untenable.
Connections were bolted where feasible to permit speedy assembly on site, while complex connections were pre-assembled in the works to prove their fit. Many of these components were made in Turkey and then transported across land to Astana.
The entire build process, from briefing of the architects to completion, has taken just 21 months.
Buro Happold was commissioned by Turkish company Sembol Construction, which was working on behalf of the president of Kazakhstan. Site supervision and final design and construction documents were provided by structural engineering consultants Arce, of Istanbul in Turkey, based on drawings produced by Buro Happold. Theatre specialists AMPC worked with Foster and Partners on the opera house design.
The structural design, as submitted by Buro Happold, was developed in accordance with British Standards and all steel has been treated or clad to obtain the necessary fire rating.
Buro Happold
Press office and practice information at www.burohappold.com
Photographs of the completed building during the opening ceremony are available. Please contact the press office.
Contact:
Neil Wilks
Press officer
Tel +44 (0)1225 321 764
Fax +44 (0)8707 874 148
Mobile +44 (0)7738 574 178
Email neil.wilks@burohappold.com
Buro Happold is a multi-disciplinary international practice of consulting engineers established in 1976. It offers civil and structural engineering, mechanical and electrical engineering, quantity surveying, building services and environmental engineering, health and safety management, infrastructure and traffic engineering, ground engineering, façade engineering, fire engineering, computational fluid dynamics analysis, disability design consultancy, project management, urban design and a range of specialist CAD services.
