Ashgabat, Turkmenistan’s beautiful but sparsely populated city of marble

I’m sure many of us, as I did, draw a blank when the obscure country of Turkmenistan is mentioned, so I’ll give a brief introduction to this mysterious barren state before diving into the fascinating architecture of Ashgabat (Turkmenistan’s capital).

It is located in Central Asia, sandwiched between the other ‘stans’ (Afghanistan, Uzbekistan) and Iran. It only became an independent state in 1991 after being ruled by Moscow as a part of the USSR for over 60 years and was then immediately plunged into dictatorship. It was first ruled by Saparmurat Niyazov and since 2006 has been ruled by Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov (I applaud anyone who can pronounce that correctly) who is, to put it mildly, eccentric. For example, he banned black and dirty cars in Ashgabat as he thought they were unlucky and made a rap video to introduce Turkmenistan to foreigners. The last thing to know about Turkmenistan is that it is extremely isolated, repressive, and poor, with even fewer tourists visiting it than North Korea.

Despite most of Turkmenistan’s 7.5 million population living in poverty, the country’s huge natural gas reserves have allowed the two dictators to construct huge, lavish sculptures, as well as the largest concentration of marble buildings in the world. Ashgabat has 543 white marble buildings covering an area of 4.5 million m2 which are, as most of the inner city is, uninhabited. As well as this, Ashgabat also holds the Guinness world record for the largest flagpole, fountain complex, and enclosed Ferris wheel. I would recommend a quick google of Ashgabat as some of the architecture is simply astounding.

To give this article some sort of link to engineering, I thought Ashgabat would be a great way to explore the uses and merits of marble in modern day construction. Whilst it has been used throughout history for the exterior of buildings, it is now often used inside for things like countertops because of its natural heat resistance. For this reason, it is widely used in hotter countries, acting like a natural air conditioner. Although it may look luxurious, it is surprisingly cheap, which I’m sure is why Niyazov chose it as his primary building material, along with solid gold.

Throughout history, dictators and totalitarian regimes have employed their absolute power over state resources to construct truly remarkable projects. While their actions towards their subjects were deplorable, both Niyazov and Berdymukhamedov undeniably possessed a keen eye for design, making them worthy additions to this list.