Tirana is becoming an unlikely hotspot for offbeat architecture as politicians court high-profile foreign architects to transform the Albanian capital into a “world city”. Starr Charles reports.
“Tirana is changing so fast, so very, very fast, and in an explosive way,” Italian architect Stefano Boeri told Dezeen.
“It’s very difficult to find an architect that is not working in Tirana or Albania right now,” added OODA co-founder Diogo Brito. “What we are seeing in Albania is quite unique.”
Focus on “artistic expression”
A wave of radical high-rises are currently proposed or under construction in the Albanian capital, often designed by prominent foreign studios and often taking outlandish forms.
Examples include a tower in the shape of the former communist state’s national hero by Dutch studio MVRDV and another that resembles a stack of gabled houses, designed by Italian studio Network of Architecture (NOA) in collaboration with locals Atelier 4.
Tirana is a rare case of an environment in which architects are being encouraged to push the boundaries, NOA co-founder Lukas Rungger told Dezeen.
“It’s a maximum of artistic expression that goes first, and then you find ways of building it,” he said of the design and build process in the city.
“I think the brief is much more to produce a piece of art or a sculpture, or anything that is starting more from storytelling, than from a structural approach or an aesthetics approach.”
Above: OODA has unveiled designs for a pair of kinked skyscrapers in the city. Image by Plomp. Top: MVRDV has designed a tower in the shape of a head. Image by MVRDV
Portuguese firm OODA is among the most active foreign studios in Albania, with eight proposals under development.
These include the Hora Vertikale skyscraper, composed of 13 staggered cubes reaching 140-metres-tall, and its more recently unveiled Bond Tower, which will comprise two connected skyscrapers rising 50 storeys and designed to evoke “the grace of ballet”.
OODA co-founder Brito said that overseas architects are being drawn in by the creative freedom on offer, facilitated by relatively relaxed planning laws and building codes compared to elsewhere in Europe.
“[Albania] is giving a great deal of power to the architects in order to design with much less bureaucracy and laws and coding that we find in other countries, but also giving us architects more responsibility to do it well,” he told Dezeen.
“What we are seeing in Albania is quite unique,” he added. “We are getting the possibility to work in such striking and amazing opportunities, like big towers and amazing resorts in the south, where the architect plays a significant role in all the project scope.”
“All the most prominent architects are just starting to build there or approving projects, and it’s very difficult to find an architect that is not working in Tirana or Albania right now.”
The Hora Vertikale skyscraper will comprise 13 stacked blocks. Image by Plomp
The influx of foreign architects is helping to plug an experience gap in Albania’s architecture workforce and raise the profile of the existing design scene, according to Atelier4 director Andi Efthimi.
“We don’t try to bring only big names, just in the beginning, just to be taken seriously,” he told Dezeen. “Right now, only the people that are having these nice and creative ideas are the ones having new projects.”
Contemporary architecture playing a “main role”
The boom is being spearheaded by Tirana’s mayor, Erion Veliaj, who was elected in 2015, and Albanian prime minister and fellow Socialist Edi Rama.
They have made architecture and urban design a key part of the strategy to boost Tirana’s international reputation as Albania seeks to attract more tourists and sustain economic growth.
“I think it’s a very clear idea, which is to make a city that is really a world city,” said Boeri, who was commissioned to develop the Tirana 2030 masterplan.
Boeri’s plan prioritises transport services, green areas, controlled urban expansion and the protection of the city’s architectural heritage.
He has since opened an office in Tirana, in recognition of the fact that it is becoming an important architecture hotspot.
Boeri’s studio is also designing one of its vertical-forest towers for Tirana. Image courtesy of Stefano Boeri Architetti
“[Rama] decided to make Tirana a place where the presence of contemporary architecture is really playing a main role in the future of the city,” explained Boeri. “That’s why he’s interested in architects coming from all the parts of the world.”
The concept of internationalism is still a relatively novel one in Albania, which after being occupied by fascist Italy and the Nazis during world war two spent much of the 20th century under an oppressive communist dictatorship, isolated even from the Soviet Union and China.
A chaotic transition to capitalism in the 1990s stunted its growth, and despite greater political stability in recent years it remains one of the poorest countries in Europe.
“It was a closed city”
However, Tirana does have a track record of using architecture as a tool for social transformation.
Rama, an artist who served as Tirana mayor from 2000 to 2011, led initiatives to restore the city’s public buildings and inviting development through international competitions.
Most famously, he had communist-era structures painted in bright colours and patterns.
“I think what Edi Rama has done is super important,” Boeri said. “It was a way to not erase these legacies, but try to superimpose these legacies and other processes that are more oriented to a cosmopolitan identity for Tirana.”
“It was a closed city in a closed front with a closed imagination, and they had no possibility to communicate; they were completely isolated.”
Puzzle Tirana was designed in response to Albania’s history. Image by NOA and Atelier4
Some of Tirana’s new architecture picks up on the theme of reframing the past in a positive way.
For example, NOA and Atelier 4’s mixed-use tower of stacked, house-shaped volumes, named Puzzle Tirana, is described by Rungger as a “response to what happened” in Tirana under communism.
“Everybody needed to be the same,” he said. “I think this is why it’s so open nowadays.”
“Of course, it’s a very complex thing and there’s many different layers that are coming together, but I think our design proposal for Puzzle Tirana was touching on what we have found so far, not just on a built context, but also on a cultural, social and evolutionary context of the last decades.”
“The country doesn’t shy away from its past”
Another building that seeks a connection to the past is MVRDV‘s Skanderbeg Building, which was designed to double as a “figurative sculpture” of the country’s prominent historical figure Gjergj Kastriot – known locally as Skanderbeg – who revolted against Ottoman rule in the 15th century.
Currently being constructed in the city’s Skanderbeg Square, similarly named after the national hero, the 85-metre-tall structure is modelled on Kastriot’s bust.
The widest part of the building depicts his shoulders while the upper levels round off to create a head-like shape. Protrusions in the form of balconies are intended to echo a nose, ears and beard.
“The country doesn’t shy away from its past – it wants to confront it and make it part of its future,” said MVRDV co-founder Winy Maas. “That’s where architecture can be a powerful tool.”
“As the city continues to grow and evolve, it’s crucial that all new developments strike a balance between innovation and respect for the past.”
MVRDV transformed the Pyramid of Tirana into a cultural hub. Photo by Ossip van Duivenbode
Working with local studio IRI Architecture, MVRDV also recently completed a playful renovation of the Pyramid of Tirana, first opened in the 1980s as an homage to dictator Enver Hoxha but now a cultural hub.
The pyramid, as well as the painting of the communist-era blocks, form part of a strong tradition of architectural eclecticism in Tirana that contemporary architects are seizing upon with zeal.
“Tirana is a city where diversity and uniqueness thrive, shaping all parts of society,” said Maas.
“This is also evident in how the city grows – more like a colourful collection than a uniform whole,” he added. “The newly emerging designs create something unique and help the city stand out.”
“A risk to become a little bit too heterogeneous”
Boeri has attempted to encourage this architectural diversity in his masterplan.
“I insist on the fact that this variety of styles is a way to import the roots of creativity of different architects and designers from different parts of the world, and to install them in Tirana,” he explained.
It is a philosophy that comes with risks, however – namely the potential for a hotchpotch of badly mismatched buildings.
“We need to do it well, otherwise there will be this massiveness of ideas that are not well done,” said Brito.
Boeri too is alive to the challenge, particularly as development in Tirana shows no sign of slowing down.
“It’s very strong this kind of explosion of openness and this explosion of contemporaneity, which has a risk to become a little bit too heterogeneous,” he said.
That could mean that, as in China, where president Xi Jinping famously put a stop to “weird architecture”, Albania’s status as a playground for ambitious foreign architects may prove to be short-lived.
“Tirana is changing so fast, so very, very fast, and in an explosive way,” said Boeri. “I think now is the moment to propose new rules.”
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