An apartment with a ski slope

Architects in the Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan have come up with an ingenious way of taking advantage of the country’s freezing winters by revealing plans to create a stunning new apartment block which has its very own ski slope.

Winter sports lovers, who earlier had to drive hours to get to the nearest ski slope, will now be able to glide down the slope from the top floor to the bottom at this new city housing complex. A group of architects came up with the idea for the Slalom House project in Kazakhstan’s capital city of Astana, which has now been presented to the public, and the 21-storey building is already becoming the talk of the town.

Winter temperatures in the city often fall to around minus 20 degrees celsius, with cold conditions lasting from November to April. Keen to take advantage of the cold weather and the Kazakh love for the outdoors, the architects developed an outdoor ski slope, which will snake around the side of a building, giving skiers plenty of decent bends and chances to show off their skills.

One member of the team that worked on the project, Vladimir Ku, said that with such long periods of winter conditions, it was a pity that there was no opportunity for people  to engage in winter sports without any suitable slopes in the area, which was the motive behind the new project by architect Shohan Mataybekov. The total length of the slalom course would be 326 metres (1,070 feet) and the width will stretch to 27 metres (88 feet).

City Council officials now need to approve the project, which would see the first floor devoted to shops and the upper floor to private housing accommodation. The project, the first of its kind anywhere in the world, would be the first slalom course in a busy city centre. Using the synthetic snow material snowflex during the summer months, the impressive runway will be used all year round for general snow sports.