Kazakhstan has chosen mass timber for the buildings of Almaty Superski, the Foster + Partners-designed resort rising in the mountains south of the country’s largest city. That is according to Kazakh Tourism Development, the state company whose board appointed Canadian engineering and construction firm StructureCraft to design and fabricate the resort’s timber structures.
Chief executive Yerzhan Yerkinbayev said the resort’s buildings and cable car stations would be built mainly from wood to limit excavation on the mountainside. The approach was chosen, he said, because it is “set to reduce the amount of earthwork and mitigate environmental impact” across the site.
That environmental case carries particular weight because the resort will rise on Kok-Zhailau and Kumbel Peak, an alpine meadow within the Ile-Alatau National Park whose slopes host snow leopards, Tian Shan spruce, and the wild apple forests of Malus sieversii. The site is among the most fiercely contested pieces of ground in the country.
A near-identical resort was planned for the same valley under former president Nursultan Nazarbayev, before a campaign that gathered close to 29,000 signatures helped force its cancellation. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev banned the project in 2019, telling a government meeting, “We don’t need it,” and citing opposition from environmental experts.
Buffer-zone protections followed, with a 2023 Supreme Court ruling fixing limits around Kok-Zhailau, only for the Almaty Superski plan to return to the same gorge and peak in 2025. This version is promoted as the lawful, lower-impact alternative, confined to the park’s limited-use zones and, according to the Ministry of Ecology, developed only in accordance with protected-area law.
StructureCraft was selected to handle both the design and production of those timber structures, which are unusual in a sector where engineering and fabrication are normally split between firms. It runs a custom dowel-laminated timber line it bills as the largest and fastest in the world, and has built its name on long-span and prefabricated work craned into place as finished sections.
Alongside the timber, French manufacturer POMA — operating since 1936 and behind close to 8,000 installations across 90 countries — won a separate open tender to build 11 cableways, including 3S gondolas, 10-seater gondola lifts, and chairlifts. US-based Hill International will coordinate design, construction, and scheduling after joining consultants PGI and DCSA in overseeing the tender.
On its own, the resort covers 1,022 hectares, with 17 lifts, more than 60 kilometres of runs, and a 20-hectare mountain village, about half the terrain set aside for beginners, and the whole site planned for accessibility. It forms the flagship of a wider tourism programme the government is counting on for economic growth, with officials projecting tourism tax revenue could nearly double to 185.9 billion tenge, about US$362 million, as the country works to diversify away from oil and minerals.
Early site works have begun on the access road and related infrastructure, ahead of the resort buildings, for which StructureCraft has only just been engaged to design. Kazakh Tourism Development plans to open Almaty Superski in December 2028.
