Eco-Hydro Capital reimagines New Tashkent as a horizontal, agriculture-driven capital — one that reconnects a Soviet-era city with the land, the water, and the local values it grew from.
Uzbekistan has passed through several critical thresholds throughout its history. One of the most significant was its independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union, which set the country on a new path of nation-building. Yet a deep disconnect remains between the urban and economic structures produced during the Soviet era and this new phase of development; the gap between contemporary urban life and inherited habits has not yet been fully absorbed by the city or its social fabric. Eco-Hydro Capital, New Tashkent renews this Soviet-era building stock, reintroducing functions that help the city reconnect with Uzbekistan’s local values.
A capital woven with agriculture
Tashkent also sits at the heart of one of Uzbekistan’s most vital resources: agriculture. The country sustains a form of farming so genuinely rooted in the land that it has become increasingly rare to find anywhere else in the world. Although Tashkent functions as an administrative center, the country’s identity is shaped far more by agriculture and local resources than by industry.
In designing Eco-Hydro Capital, the central question we asked was: beyond serving purely as an administrative seat, how can a capital be conceived that is genuinely interwoven with nature, agriculture and production? The Soviet-era building stock, meanwhile, has become largely obsolete in terms of quality of life and is now a serious concern; this new capital project also serves as a critical vehicle for the modernization of the region’s living environments.
A microclimate strategy shaped by the land
The region’s continental climate is unforgiving, with harsh winters and scorching summers. Creating microclimates therefore became one of the project’s central concerns. Drawing on the courtyard typology and certain structural features found in local architecture, we sought to restructure New Tashkent around this principle: terraces that generate a microclimate effect within courtyard buildings, supporting strong neighborly relationships.
The sense of community and neighborhood ties here are not something to be artificially reconstructed, as is often attempted in cities today, but an existing, already-present reality; our focus was on developing a typology that reinforces what already exists. Water plays an equally important role in this strategy: despite some rainfall, the climate remains continental and arid, so we designed a water cycle capable of effectively collecting and utilizing natural precipitation.
A horizontal city
In contrast to a generic drive toward high-rise “Dubai-fication,” we planned a horizontal city, one interwoven with the land, the ground and the human scale. This led us to generous urban voids and expansive courtyards, alongside an approach to individual housing that avoids a single repeated unit, instead producing typologies at varying scales tailored to different ways of living and different needs. Administrative and office buildings likewise move away from tower-like density, taking on low, horizontal forms that remain embedded within existing green areas; we positioned these along the perimeter to create efficient zones of use.
A masterplan that creates its own topography
Although Tashkent is surrounded by mountains, the city itself has little internal topography. To avoid the flattening, monotonous effect that a masterplan of this scale can produce, and to give the city and its residents a variety of panoramic perspectives, we generated a topographic morphology within the plan itself. This topography, working together with the zoning plan, allows for variety while ensuring that every part of the city has equal access to views and vistas.
In terms of mobility, rather than a uniform grid, we developed a new-generation grid system designed to ease both connections to the city center and relationships within the city itself. Technical offices, healthcare facilities, workplaces and educational buildings are likewise distributed at the neighborhood scale, accessible to everyone, rather than concentrated in a few central locations.
Urban agriculture as an economy
Finally, we planned urban agriculture not as a decorative gesture but as a genuine part of the city’s economy. In most modern cities, society has largely forgotten how to cultivate its own food; in Uzbekistan, however, agriculture remains deeply woven into everyday life. Eco-Hydro Capital modernizes this relationship, envisioning a city where people can grow their own food at a genuinely urban scale.
