Typology: Temporary Space
Services: Art Direction, Spatial Solutions, Visual Communication
Client: Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture
Location: Almaty, Kazakhstan
Year: 2022
Surface: 429 m²
People Behind:
Architect / Creative Direction - Alina Alimzhanova
Visual Id Design / Creative Direction - Zhanna EE
Digital Asset Editors - Anastasia Mikhno, Valiantsin Yarash
The Central Exhibition Hall was converted into a short‑term hub for the Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture—a single space that had to perform as office, gallery, bookshop, and artist‑in‑residence all at once.
Tselinny asked for “a place for people,” “no more grey,” and a balance of private / public, quiet / loud moments. We answered by treating the space as a 1:1 sketchbook: a paint‑by‑numbers graphic system stitches every surface and sign together, turning walls into way‑finding and uniting the mixed programme under one visual language.
A deliberately gender‑neutral violet floods key planes, activating nooks without prescribing who they’re for. Modular furniture arrives as oversized building blocks—lightweight, stackable, and playful—so the room can morph from workshop to reading lounge in minutes, giving residents the freedom to create on their own terms. The rediscovered Soviet glass‑block wall completes the picture, refracting colour through its translucent grid and reconnecting the hall to its modernist roots while projecting a vibrant new face to the street.