Alatau Complex and Gateway District

The Alatau Complex and Gateway District is Skidmore, Owings and Merrill's landmark quarter for Alatau, the new city rising along the Almaty–Qonaev highway in southeastern Kazakhstan, developed by Alatau City Development Group. Two towers define the composition: a 272-metre, 56-storey primary tower holding office floors above premium residences, and an 80-metre companion carrying a luxury hotel with its own branded residences. Both are shaped by a "mountain landscape" concept drawn from the Trans-Ili Alatau range on the horizon, their stepped massing terracing back at each level to give nearly every floor an external terrace and to echo the ridgelines behind them. A three-level podium of some 58,000 square metres knits the towers into the street with retail, cultural venues and event space, and the whole complex totals roughly 276,800 square metres. Because the site sits in a seismically active region, the structure combines Japanese damping technology with an American-style reinforced structural frame, an engineering pairing that lets the towers reach landmark height on ground that would otherwise cap them.