Kok Zhailau Mountain Resort, Almaty, Kazakhstan

Located in the Tien Shan Mountains, overlooking the city of Almaty and with the main ski village site proposed at an elevation of almost 2,000 meters, Kok Zhailau Mountain Resort is a truly exceptional development project, involving the full range of landscape architectural services – from large scale landscape master planning and environmental analysis, down to detailed design of water features/ice sculptures and native plant selection. Inspired by the sites geographic intersection of the historic Silk Road with the Tian Shan Mountain range of Central Asia, the detailed master plan for this four season mountain resort facility was developed. Envisioned as a gateway to the mountains, with a strong commitment and focus on the preservation, restoration and celebration of the sites fragile alpine valley and mountain ecosystem, extensive research and analysis of the physical, environmental, cultural, public use, future use and long term sustainability of the site was carried out before any planning or design work took place.