I I was met by my driver at Manas airport, outside Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan’s capital, just before dawn, fresh from an overnight flight from London and armed with a bloated hiking pack. With Kyrgyz techno blaring from the radio, I was quite sure my new friend had also not slept. He tried to teach me how to say ‘hello’ in both Kyrgyz and Russian. After my fourth failed attempt, I smiled and gently rolled my head towards the window.
The first soft, pink light of day lent an aura of calm to the empty streets, and I turned my attention to my surroundings; the abandoned construction sites and the epically Brutalist Soviet bus station, the beautiful tree-lined university streets and the imposing Ala-Too Square. It was my first time in Central Asia, and I was struck by the architectural legacy of an economic development very different from that of Western Europe. This twilit concrete patchwork sat against the sweeping curtain of the Ala-Too mountain range, whose far-off peaks, the setting for our project, were just starting to catch the first rays of the sun.