May 19, 2025: Architecture in Tirana

Last night we went to Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning. It was the English version with Albanian subtitles. The movie came out in Albania six days before the premiere in the U.S.

We had looked online at the movie times the previous night, and they were 5:30pm and 8:30pm. But when we went to the movie, the times had changed. It was only showing at 9:00pm.

We observed that they have only one theatre, and they show a different movie one after the other.

So we went to the 9:00 show. We got settled. There were no previews. A young lady came in and turned out the lights, and the movie started immediately.

During the movie, a young lady near Brenda kept getting on her phone, and the light was blinding. Brenda “pssted” her and gave hand gestures to her to stop. She didn’t. Since only about 10% of the seats were filled, we went down to another row away from her.

About halfway through, one couple left. With only 10 minutes to go another couple left. I would like to know why. Didn’t like it? Needed to get home to the babysitter?

We always watch to the end in case there is a teaser. We were sitting there at the end, and a young man came and turned out the lights. It was pitch black, but we were able to find our way out.

There was a big earthquake in 2019. It is determined that buildings kill people, not earthquakes. Great care is made to ensure that buildings are earthquake proof.

A plan for the reclaiming of the landscape: this is the vision for the future of Tirana for 2030 and the objective of the project developed by Stefano Boeri Architetti for the capital of Albania.

Tirana is undergoing a construction boom of buildings of unusual architecture that fit in with this construction plan. It was started by Edi Rama when he was mayor.

Each project is a competition among architects with a combination of local and international. Foreign businesses can’t own the land. They must have a foreign partner. A foreign individual can buy and own an apartment in a building. However, he must become an Albanian citizen before he can buy land.

Here are some of the buildings that we saw. Many of them surround Skanderbeg Square.

This 31-story building, with attached 10-story building, is called the *Eyes of Tirana*. Construction started in 2017. Composed of steel, glass, and concrete, it has three sections shaped like cubes. When finished it will be a mixed use building for apartments, offices, and shops. The top of the tower opens like a flower. The atriums have the appearance of an eye from which it got its name. I can’t see that from the ground. Our apartment was next door to this building.

A single trunk of a tree whose branches spread into four pieces extending upwards was the model for the *Alban (ATTI) Tower*. The panels of thirteen different colors are made of light aluminum, bent to create the curves of the tower. The multicolor facade is not the same during the sunny hours, it changes like a spectrum. The facade of the building is made of recycled materials. Funding came from the EU.

Between 2018 and 2020, a group of old two-story villas were demolished in order to free up space for the “Skanderbeg Building”. When completed, *Tirana’s Rock* will be a 26-floor mixed-use building. The building will also be among the world’s largest that doubles as a figurative sculpture. It represents the bust of Gjergj Kastrioti (also known as Skanderbeg), one of Albania’s main historical figures.

The *Intercontinental Hotel* is scheduled to be finished this year. It looks even more impressive at night.

Maritim Hotel Plaza Tirana is a 5-star hotel. The central tower stands 279 feet tall, and consists of 24 floors. The architectural design is notable for incorporating the Kapllan Pasha Tomb, tucked in a void in one of the complex’s low-slung concrete buildings, and for its use of concrete panels cast on-site.

Kapllan Pasha Tomb – the wall of the building is bowing down to it.

Tirana Stadium Arena Tower and Marriott Hotel.

The *Vertical Forest* shares one wall with an adjacent building. The new building opens like a flower towards the city through the remaining three sides which contain 3,200 plants and shrubs along with 145 trees.

*Downtown One* currently is the tallest building in Albania. On one side, specific sections jut out or are recessed to represent the map of Albania. The design even allows residents to identify their homes within the context of Albania’s geography. As the architects envisioned, someone might live in the “Tirana pixel” while another resides in the “Durrës pixel” and so on.

Construction has not started on *Mount Tirana*. At 675 feet Mount Tirana will be the tallest building in the country. The design was inspired by the impressive mountains that surround the capital. Mount Tirana will be constructed primarily from locally sourced materials like natural stone. Efforts have been made to minimize the building’s need for mechanical cooling and to choose indigenous plants for the terraces.

This building called *Sky Tower* has the country’s first rotating restaurant on its 18th floor.

Can you find Brenda in the photograph? We climbed the *Pyramid of Tirana*. The 70-foot concrete cone in Albania’s capital opened in 1988 as a museum of the life of former leader Enver Hoxha, Over time, the pyramid was taken over by multiple uses, including a radio station, a nightclub, conference center, and a base for NATO during the 1998-99 war in neighboring Kosovo. Eventually, the municipality decided to make it into an IT center for the young. The new activities are housed in an assortment of 48 multicolored boxes scattered in, on, and around the old structure like a careless child’s building blocks. It was designed by the Dutch architectural firm MVRDV.

The boxes contain such things as classrooms and workshops, cafes, startup spaces, a room on Airbnb, and an outpost of the French embassy.

There is a lot going on in this photo. In the foreground are placards representing the country of each person who attended the EU meeting here. Behind them stands an art project and venue called *The Cloud*. It is composed of white steel rods. Behind The Cloud is a curved building called *The Met Tirana*, a 12-story mixed-use development.

Here is a view of The Met Tirana from a different direction. It was inspired by Berat, “the white city of 1,000 windows”, our next destination.

The atrium of *Toptani Shopping Center* can be used as a shortcut to the natural access routes of the city to generate more pedestrian traffic.

We got a walking tour with a young Albanian named Erind. He discussed some of the buildings and showed us murals and graffiti.

*Mother’s Care* by the German painter Case Maclain.

Erind told us that a lot of the mural artists use the Doodle Grid method. Instead of creating a precise square grid, artists draw an assortment of unique and random shapes or doodles, which serve as reference points when scaling the original image. This approach eliminates the need for perfect lines and measurements and adds spontaneity.