Baluan Sholak Sports Palace

Did You Know?

• The renovation was undertaken in preparation for the 2011 Asian Winter Games, for staging hockey, short track and figure skating events.
• The closing ceremony of the 2011 Asian Winter Games was held in the Palace.
• The renovation added multi-storey parking for 850 cars.

History

The Baluan Sholak Sports Palace was constructed in 1967 on the orders of the Kazakh SSR’s State Committee for Physical Culture and Sports. Its original design included a main hall with four stands seating six thousand, a machine room for artificial ice production, and medical and methodological rooms. The courtyard hosted international, all-Union, and republican competitions in boxing, basketball, and karate, as well as ice variety and ballet shows, international exhibitions, and national fairs.

The building has an extended first floor. The main facade features a loggia with a solid stained-glass window and blind fences on either side, with a long ramp in front of the entrance doors. The courtyard facade replaces the loggia with large stained-glass windows and a central gate. Side facades combine blank, wide, smooth corner partitions with a frieze of solid stained glass; between the doors, a low, polychrome two-color relief depicts sports themes.

On both the main and courtyard facades, a high blank wall with an arched gable is covered in large triangular prisms, symmetrically offset and alternating in vertical rows. The main facade’s upper left side has an applied flat-relief metal composition of runners with a torch, balanced by a parapet inscription of the full name on the right. The courtyard facade’s upper wall has a ribbon aperture. The side facades’ upper stained-glass windows are covered by a four-row grid of flat rectangular plates set obliquely, offset in pairs in adjacent rows.

The western facade has a small loggia with a blank fence at the top. The architects were V. Katsev, I. Slonov, O. Naumova, V. Tolmachev, and I. Tsitrin. A sgraffito by graphic artist Yevgeny Sidorkin is located on the eastern side.

Location

The Sports Palace is located in the center of the metropolis, bordering the Central Stadium and the Promenade shopping center. To the south is the Astana hotel, with arrivals and exits to Abai Avenue and Baitursynov Street, next to the Baikonur metro station.