Architecture of Mongolia

Architecture and Downtown Structure of 

Ulaanbaatar Today

Mongolia is the land of the nomads. We've always migrated across the country searching for places most suitable for our animals in response to the weather. Therefore, our homes had to be easily movable, which is why we invented the yurt (Mongolian name: Ger).


Yurts were the basis for the development of traditional Mongolian architecture. During the 16th and 17th centuries, many buddhist monasteries were built and they all started out as yurt-temples. It was not until the late 1900's, when the ensemble of Ulaanbaatar's downtown was designed by Soviet architects, developing the traditions of Classicism under the conditions of Communism (Stalinist architecture), that Mongolia started flourishing with neoclassical buildings. Most of the skyscrapers in downtown today, are all post-modern buildings since they were built in recent years. However, they mostly have modern architecture and have a more boring international taste.

Architecture is a way of preventing and avoiding bad emotion. Buildings are able to solve a fraction of our dissatisfactions or prevent evil from unfolding under their watch. The architectures of our downtown Ulaanbaatar are able to do just that. The new modern styled buildings such as the "The Blue Sky Tower," "Central Tower," and "Nissan Tower" offer a very clean and elegant decoration for the city. "The Blue Sky Tower" is shaped like the edge of a sword or like a fish, finished with glass layer. It's the most postmodernist building in Ulaanbaatar one can find. "Central Tower" and the "Nissan Tower" are both the more pure modern architecture buildings. They are both more international-based and plain square buildings with just a little playfulness. Although "Central Tower" may be the more flashy of the two, both aren't as postmodern as the "The Blue Sky Tower."

These three buildings and some others have become the very pride of the city mainly because they're the first 'real' skyscrapers to stand in the heart of Ulaanbaatar. However, approximately %70 of the city's buildings are still standing remains of the neoclassical buildings built during the Communist regime before 1990. There aren't any skyscrapers but mostly nine story high apartment buildings and similar four to six story high office buildings in downtown. The apartment buildings are all built with Neoclassical architecture. The majority of the buildings are made with blocks and cement with no glass frame except for the windows. The exact same buildings can be found in Russia, and in cities in east Germany. 
The four to six story high office buildings and schools that were built during the communist regime have international based neoclassical architecture, finished off with a little Romanesque and Classical style pointy roofs. A few years ago, I woke in the while traveling in east Europe. I hand't fully woken up and thought that we had traveled back home because of the similarities of the buildings. Eastern Europe was once a Communist country so the city planning and the architecture were similar enough to Ulaanbaatar's and Russia's to confuse anyone. 

Ulaanbaatar doesn't have your ordinary downtown. In it's original planning, it didn't have a planned central downtown but was a very spread and plain city built in a communist regime. In 1990, Mongolia became a democratic country and we were given new opportunities for building buildings. Therefore, the downtown we eventually created till today has developed around the college district. Ulaanbaatar's college district is where the main colleges and its campuses are located. Due to lack of land control, many new private schools and other buildings have been built in that district making the district an everyday destination for locals. Unlike the "new" American downtown, as cited in Larry Ford's "America's New Downtowns," Ulaanbaatar's downtown has grown to become quite the classic "central business district" that evolved in the last century in America. It isn't visually central with tall skyscrapers standing in the middle like New York, but eventually it will become so.