Construction has started on the Pyramid of Tirana, the brutalist monument in the heart of Albania’s capital city. MVRDV’s design will see this crucial heritage building, once the showpiece of Communist dictator Enver Hoxha, dramatically renovated. The concrete structure will be reused, the atrium and its surroundings greened and opened, and a small village of cafes, studios, workshops, and classrooms – where Albanian youth will learn various technology subjects for free – will permeate the site, both inside and outside the pyramid itself. The Pyramid is thus expected to become a new hub for Tirana’s cultural life and a carrier for the new generation.
Servete Maçi is a primary school located in the capital of Albania, Tirana. This new built school is situated in a very dense area close to the center. The building is composed of 18 classrooms, 5 laboratories, one gymnasium, one full size auditorium for 140 people, a library, 8 individual spaces dedicated to the learning of musical instruments, several administrative area as well as all the necessary technical spaces and restrooms to accommodate all the functions and users of the building.
The school also has a semi internal / external courtyard which serves as a dynamic public space that allows students to enter and exit the school through a safe threshold. This is a strong element which can be used by both students as well as their parents. In addition, this public space creates a soft transition between the school and the main street.
This project for the restructuring of Skanderbeg Square is the result of an international architecture competition won by 51N4E in 2008. The competition’s proposal, conceived in collaboration with Albanian artist Anri Sala, reorganizes Tirana’s central square, a vast ex-communist space, in a simple yet radical way. In a complex and dense urban context, on this site that is both the core of the Albanian capital city and a symbol for the whole country, the project installs a generous pedestrian area. The square presents itself as a void in the chaos of the city, a flat pyramid lined by a densely planted periphery, formed by a collection of old and new public spaces and gardens. The resulting green belt acts as an antechamber negotiating the transition between the congested city and the square. The oppressive monumentality of Communist architecture is counteracted by the ample and low pyramid making up the square: when standing at its tip, the citizens find themselves at par with the authoritarian architecture of the past. They can contemplate the buildings defining Albania’s past, suddenly opened up to new ways of reading, and embrace them as a history on which to build on.
Photography: 51N4E & Sannah Belzer, Filip Dujardin
Team 51N4E: Johan Anrys, Freek Persyn, Peter Swinnen, Ulrike Franzel, Valbona Koçi, Griet Kuppens, Tom Baelus, Marc-Achille Filhol, Philippe Nathan, Emmanuel Debroise
The tower is part of the ambitious new master plan for the city, which converges around ten towers. The main program of the tower consists of office and housing program. Shopping and restaurant facilities are located in the base and at the top of the building.
Our first investigation was to resolve the dilemma of elegance – a clear ambition stated in the master plan – and square meters. We propose a volume based on a super ellipse: starting as an ellipse and ending as a rectangle. The subtle transition between these two basic shapes makes a tower which fully captures the Mediterranean light of Tirana, and creates ever changing shadows.
MVRDV has begun construction on Downtown One, a 140-metre tall mixed-use skyscraper in Tirana that will become Albania’s tallest building. The most striking element of the 37-storey tower is its relief of cantilevered houses and offices, which form a pixelated ‘map’ of Albania, each representing a town or city, turning this building into an icon in the heart of Tirana, Albania. Completion of the building, which was designed for developer Kastrati Construction, is expected in 2024.
Downtown One is envisioned as an expression celebrating the progress of Albania, located in central Tirana on the Bajram Curri Boulevard, to the south of the Lana River. On its principle façades, the 140-metre rectilinear tower features a series of cantilevered houses and offices, forming a relief pattern on the building’s surface. Every house or office represents a village or town, so that when viewed from a distance, these cantilevers form an abstracted map of Albania.
Located in the heart of Tirana, in the same urban district as the historical residence of Albanian Communist Party leader Enver Hoxha, the Blloku Cube is the new multifunctional center signed by Stefano Boeri Architetti, now under construction.
The building stands right on the junction between the streets of Pjeter Bogdani and Vaso Pasha, in the heart of the Blloku, one of the most prestigious districts in Tirana which, in the post-communist era, has gone from being a military zone of restricted access to a nerve center of city life, thanks to the proliferation of facilities, shops, bars and restaurants lining its characteristic and regularly shaped blocks. It is on these two streets that the main entrances of the building are positioned, to serve the retail center and the offices.
Situated in the centre of Tirana, the former Enver Hoxha Museum designed in the 1980s by a group of architects including the then president’s daughter Pranvera Hoxha and her husband Klement Kolneci. Throughout the years it has also served as a temporary base for NATO during the War in Kosovo, a night club and as an event space. In recent years there were plans to transform the structure into a national theatre. These plans never materialized meaning the building has been left to decay for more than a decade.
Tirana Flux Exchange [FL-EX] is a proposal for a multimodal transportation hub and new urban landscape model for the Albanian capital positioned to greatly expand the scope and connectivity of the city’s infrastructural networks. FL-EX connects the existing HSH Railway and intercity bus lines with a new airport transit, bike, and pedestrian paths linking the historic urban center to international transportation systems.
The center of Tirana is marked by a clear urban layout, but its recent growth filled up a large area around it without any order, structure, adequate services or meaningful public spaces.
In our proposal, the voids rather than the buildings become the catalysts of new urban regeneration, attracting public and private functions around a sequence of green spaces of high environmental quality. The extension of the boulevard into a lively green promenade progressively opens up to the beautiful landscape of the hills across the Tirana river.
The capital Tirana is undergoing an urban transformation which includes the restoration and refurbishment of existing buildings, the construction of a series of new public and private urban structures, and the complete reconceptualization of Scanderbeg Square. This important square is the site of the new cultural complex that will consist of a Mosque, an Islamic Centre, and a Museum of Religious Harmony.
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