Nazy's Tent!
-
I enjoyed watching the planning and construction of the Foster designed, Khan Shatyr Entertainment Centre, Astana, Kazakhstan last night on one of the Discovery channels.
Its a fantastic feat of architecture and engineering, however, while watching the program I had a continuous nagging feeling that there was something 'not right' about this project.
I did a little more research and my suspicions would appear to be well founded. I came across quite a few Net based articles on Mr Nursultan Nazarbayev, the President of Kazakhstan and feel he could have better spent the money on the people of Kazakhstan.
This article struck a cord,
*'Wow, is this where Kazakhstan should be spending money??
Although Kazakhstan has enjoyed relatively high economic growth over recent years, fueled mainly by its oil and gas industries, diversification of the economy is needed to further reduce poverty in the largest Central Asian country, UNDP said in a new report released on Wednesday.
"The main finding [of the report] is that poverty remains a problem in Kazakhstan and therefore needs to stay high on the national agenda of priorities," Gordon Johnson, deputy resident representative of UNDP Kazakhstan, told IRIN from the Kazakh commercial capital, Almaty, on
Thursday."One of the interesting findings from the report is that there is a very large portion of the population that is low income [as opposed to being in complete poverty]... about 47 percent of the population," the UNDP official said. The low income threshold is twice the subsistence minimum, thus a monthly income of some $70'*
When I looked up Mr Nazarbayev's Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nursultan_Nazarbayev and found the attached picture of him and George B, that said it all for me!
The question then arose, what moral responsibility did Norman Foster & Co have or should have had in this venture! That's a question that I'm still thinking about. His 'description' of the project is 'interesting' to say the least http://www.fosterandpartners.com/projects/1438/default.aspx
Any thoughts?
Mike
PS: ETEFE is a fantastic material. Well worth reading about, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETFE
Advertisement