An Urban Field Guide to Almaty, Kazakhstan
Make sense of Almaty's built environment, from the city to the suburbs to the streets.
Documenting everything from painted trees to irrigating aryks, this unusual resource is your guide to the elements that make Almaty so special.
Founded in 2014, Walking Almaty was a blog before it blossomed into a business. Strolling every street in the city with his camera and eye for detail, Walker-in-Chief Dennis Keen collected photos and created this "field guide" to Almaty's unusual urban landscape.
Use the Urban Field Guide to familiarize yourself with the everyday texture of Kazakhstan's greatest city, answering some FAQs along the way: Why are the trees painted white? Who spray-painted all those flying rhinos? And what's up with all the yellow pipes?
The City
Construction Elements
Soft pink "seashell rock" from Mangystau is made of eons-old fossils from the Tethys Sea.
Rough red Kordai granite is one of the defining materials of late Soviet Almaty architecture.
Anodyzed aluminum panels are a callback to the golden amulets of ancient Scythian nomads.
Sandwich panels were a symbol of the future in the heady days of Kazakhstan's 2000s oil rush.
Mounted on climate-proof ventilated facades, these cheap tiles are a renovation shortcut.
The Almaty Homebuilding Factory made dozens of designs from Kazakh oyu-örnek patterns.
Sun shields from the Swiss-French modernist god Le Corbusier, with Kazakh ornamental flair.
Industrial-chic semi-transparent cubes are often used for walk-up apartment buildings.
German for "fire wall," these windowless concrete facades are a feature of the prefab style.
Glazed ceramic squares give late-Soviet apartment block facades a certain sparkle.
Exterior Elements
Condensing units from mini-split ACs help Almatians survive sweltering summers.
Buildings where notable Kazakh lived or worked are marked with these evocative memorials.
From stencils to trilingual plaques, there are a thousand ways to mark an address in Almaty.
Old signs designate earthquake assembly points or designate award-winning homes.
These window grilles are often as fanciful as they are protective.
Cryptic symbols in red paint near the corners of buildings are in fact codes for firefighters.
Access ramps may be required by law, but their safety standards are dangerously lax.
Sheltered stairsways lead down to the spooky dungeons of Soviet-era apartment blocks.
Courtyard Elements
Mysterious metal cabinets lurk in the courtyards of Almaty, hiding electrical secrets.
Explore the city's quiet dvors and you'll find Soviet cartoon characters cast in concrete.
Defunct rear doors to the stairwells of walk-up apartment are often sadly forgotten.
The tire swan just may be the unofficial city bird of Almaty.
The Suburbs
Construction Elements
No part of Russian-style cottages is more celebrated than the decorative nalichnik.
Sometimes known as "little teeth," these wooden runners add detail to the cornice.
Often shaped like onion domes, triangular gables might be crowned with pagan rods.
Like a house that's sprouted on a house, dormer windows bring light while adding whimsy.
Whether it's "herringbone" pattern or "pine tree," wooden chevrons give cottages warmth.
Entry chambers for taking off your muddy shoes double as light-filled sunrooms.
Ubiquitous three-pitched roofs are the apparent result of remodels deferred.
Malleable and spangled, galvanized steel is cut into all manners of filigree.
Decorative cottage corners may have evolved from the shielding of joints on log cabins.
The 90s trend of shuba, or "fur coats" of plaster, decorate homes with kitschy wildlife.
Molded bricks have been used in the Islamic architecture of Central Asia for centuries.
Homes covered in polka dots are actually studded with styrofoam-like insulation pads.
Soviet industrial design lights up yards from beneath the humble eaves of thousands of homes.
UHF meets DIY as upcycled materials bring TV to suburban homes.
Use these avian perches to spot a pigeon fancier, or golubyatnik, from blocks away.
Split-identity cottages may be the legacy of communist-era communal living.
Streetside Elements
Metal sheets with wrought iron details come in a stunning variety, with common Chinese variations.
The sheltered Russian gate, built with planks and logs, may be soon extinct.
Most of Almaty now runs on gas, but these windows were once made for shoveling coal.
Without municipal trash bins, suburban dwellers get creative with their garbage receptacles.
Many cultures agree that horseshoes are a lucky charm, but should they hang up or down?
Guarding homes from the evil eye, peganum harmala is a sacred herb and fumigation tool.
From iconic Soviet boxes to homemade containers, mailboxes reveal their owners' personalities.
Rusty plates outside homes attest to a time when suburbanites subscribed to gas tank delivery.
Without drainage systems in their yards, Almatians get creative with rainwater diversion.
Weatherproofing the humble doorbell leads to DIY creativity.
The Streets
Wooden poles rarely touch the ground, hovering instead on concrete pillars.
These glass and porcelain jewels on electrical lines are collector's items for some.
The prefabricated concrete fence is a rugged icon of Soviet industrial design.
Thick metal fences painted black guard parks and gardens.
In suburban areas, above-ground yellow pipes carry natural gas to heat homes.
The history of the city can be seen through the iron discs beneath our feet.
Before homes were connected to plumbing, these hand pumps were a communal necessity.
Few things define Almaty like its aryks, roadside ditches running with mountain water.
Soviet-era design introduced the iconic swiveling bin.
Concrete flower pots bring nature's colors to city sidewalks.
The city's sidewalks are paved with a creative array of interlocking blocks.
Countless urban legends are connected to the stubborn tradition of whitewashing trees.
Almaty is known as a "garden city," but it also has its share of weeds - even cannabis.
Soviet bus stops, often defunct, have been widely admired for their quirky designs.
Amateur creativity blossoms on cobbler's signs and home addresses
To save the city from disaster, Almaty's streams have been lined with concrete or gabions.
A network of tree-lined pedestrian pathways make walking Almaty a joy.
Underground crosswalks, once home to subterranean bazaars, are increasingly ignored.
Classified ads covering every surface are a window into the city's desires.