Roofing in Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan, the largest country in Central Asia, spans steppe, desert and the high mountains of the Tien Shan and Altai. For most of its history its characteristic roof was portable: the domed felt roof of the Kazakh yurt, kiyiz üy ("felt house"), closed at the top by a wooden crown ring, the shangyrak. The shangyrak remains so strongly tied to home and family that it sits at the centre of the national emblem. Permanent architecture includes the great Timurid brick dome at Turkistan, while 20th-century towns were built largely with Soviet apartment blocks.

Climate and hazards

The climate is strongly continental, with very cold, windy winters and hot summers; snow and wind are the main loads on roofs over most of the country. The south-east, around Almaty, lies in an earthquake zone along the northern Tien Shan, and seismic design has been central to building regulation since the Soviet period.

Roofing history

Yurt-type dwellings have been used on the steppe for millennia; the earliest written description of yurt-like tents is traced to Herodotus' account of the Scythians, who lived across the Black Sea and Central Asian steppe from about 600 BCE. The Kazakh yurt has a folding lattice wall (kerege), bent roof poles (uyk) and the shangyrak at the top, all covered with felt made from the wool of the herders' own sheep. In old Kazakh communities the yurt itself might be repaired or rebuilt many times, but the shangyrak was kept and passed from father to son, its smoke stains a sign of the family's age.

The outstanding permanent roof is that of the Mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi in Turkistan, begun in 1389 for Timur and left unfinished at his death in 1405. Its main hall is covered by a brick dome 18.2 m (59.7 ft) in diameter, described as the largest surviving brick dome in Central Asia, and the tomb chamber has a double dome whose outer shell, rising to about 28 m (92 ft), is covered with green glazed hexagonal tiles.

During the Soviet period, towns and new cities were built with masonry and prefabricated concrete apartment blocks of standard series used across the USSR, including the five-storey khrushchyovka types built from about 1956 into the 1970s and their taller successors of the 1970s and 1980s.

Traditional and vernacular roofs

• Kiyiz üy (yurt): felt over a timber frame of kerege wall, uyk poles and shangyrak crown. Men make the frame; women make the felt coverings and interior decoration.

Roofing today

Yurt-making remains a living craft: in 2014 UNESCO inscribed the knowledge and skills of making Kazakh and Kyrgyz yurts on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Codes, standards and regulation

After independence Kazakhstan issued its own seismic construction code ("Construction in Seismic Regions") in 1998, revised in 2001 and 2006. The current code, SP RK 2.03-30-2017 Construction in seismic zones, introduced in 2017, combines general requirements from the Eurocodes with earlier national rules. The code is published by the construction research institute KazNIISA.

Notable roofs

• Mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi, Turkistan (1389-1405): UNESCO World Heritage Site (2003), with an 18.2 m (59.7 ft) brick dome and glazed tiled outer dome.
• Shangyrak: central motif of the state emblem adopted on 4 June 1992.

Local roofing terms

• kiyiz üy (Kazakh): felt house, yurt
• shangyrak / shanyrak (Kazakh): yurt crown ring
• uyk (Kazakh): roof pole of a yurt
• kerege (Kazakh): lattice wall of a yurt

Sources and gaps

Housing-census roof data, details of the roofing industry and descriptions of modern private houses: published information is limited.