Architectural Imagery in Children’s Books Circulating in Kazakhstan: Cultural Memory, Place Identity, and Implications for Cultural Sustainability

Abstract

This study examines how the built environment is represented in illustrated children’s books circulating in Kazakhstan and how recurring architectural images may function as carriers of cultural memory, place identity, and cultural sustainability. The purposive corpus comprises 42 illustrated publications from the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, including Kazakhstan-produced titles and translated or international books present in the local reading repertoire. The analysis combines Mallan’s approach to visual narrative with Assmann’s concept of cultural memory, Nora’s concept of lieux de mémoire, and place-based interpretation. A nine-parameter visual coding scheme was applied to composition, human–space relations, scale, visual routes, colour, realism/abstraction, narrative agency of space, schematic representation, and ecological-social context. Six recurrent architectural-environment types were identified, with three publications coded as mixed/transitional. Everyday social environments were the most frequent (12/42; 28.6%), followed by mythical-epic environments (10/42; 23.8%). Recognisable urban environments, including depictions of Astana and Almaty, linked civic landmarks with belonging and place recognition, while functional-ecological environments foregrounded relationships among infrastructure, nature, and people. The study proposes the interpretive concept of a “visualised place of memory” to describe the way architectural landmarks and spatial narratives can mediate cultural meanings in children’s books. The findings are relevant to heritage education, graphic-design pedagogy, children’s publishing, and place-based cultural policy, but they do not establish how children actually interpret these images; reception studies are therefore required.