Rotterdam-based MVRDV has introduced that renovation work has began on the Pyramid of Tirana, an adaptive reuse mission in Albania’s capital metropolis that can see a monument-museum erected in honor of Enver Hoxha, the Stalinist dictator who dominated over the mountainous Balkan nation with a ferocious grip for over 4 many years, reworked into what MVRDV has known as a “new hub for Tirana’s cultural life and a provider for the brand new technology.”
Accomplished in 1988 within the coronary heart of Tirana simply three years after Hoxha’s loss of life, the Brutalist construction first served as a decidedly eccentric landmark museum honoring Hoxha that was co-designed by his architect daughter, Pranvera Hoxha, and her husband, Klement Kolaneci, together with others.
The tenure of the so-called Enver Hoxha Museum, nonetheless, was comparatively short-lived as a pyramidal shrine (colloquially known as the Enver Hoxha Mausoleum) was shuttered shortly after the autumn of communism in Albania in 1991. The 127,000-square-foot monument was then rebranded because the Pyramid of Tirana and in subsequent years has served an eclectic vary of proposes, none of them having a lot permanence: A convention venue, a nightclub, a base for NATO throughout the 1999 Kosovo Warfare, a media broadcasting middle, and a filming location for no less than one direct-to-video horror remake. Most not too long ago, the Pyramid, having fallen right into a state of disrepair, has served as an unsanctioned (and considerably perilous) hangout spot for Albanian youths, who’ve taken it upon themselves to cowl the hulking, marble tile-clad construction in graffiti and “usually climb it at night time after which—not with out threat—slide down its slopes,” in keeping with an MVRDV press launch.
Climbing up after which sliding down the constructing appears to have been one thing of a time-honored custom for the youth of Tirana. As the present mayor of town, Erion Veliaj, defined to The Guardian final 12 months in an article detailing the reuse of Hoxha-era constructions and websites, he actually partook on this exercise in his youthful years: “I bear in mind our butts would catch hearth sliding down. All of us used to have the identical corduroy pants and you may see them dropping their corduroy ribbing,” he stated. He additionally relayed to The Guardian that he personally specified that the reimagined Pyramid ought to stay climbable. “The constructing represents our transition,” he added. “It’s a metaphorical show of what we’ve gone by.”
Proposed demolish-and-replace schemes have come and gone through the years however none have caught due largely to pushback from the residents of Tirana, preferring that the Pyramid stay standing as a reminder, nonetheless painful, of the oppressive, isolationist Hoxha regime. (Hoxha’s widow, Nexhmije Hoxha, died final 12 months on the age of 99. She remained an unapologetic defender of her late husband and his insurance policies, which included banning all faith and personal property and forbidding journey outdoors of Albania’s borders, till her loss of life.)
In 2017, a plan to revitalize and repurpose the construction was formalized, resulting in the now-underway MVRDV-lead transformation, a mission co-financed by the Albanian central authorities and the municipality of Tirana with help from the Albanian-American Improvement Basis. The reborn construction’s principal tenant would be the nonprofit group TUMO Tirana, which can set up a multifaceted inventive know-how studying hub and cultural middle on the Pyramid and supply free instructional programs in software program, movie, music, robotics, and animation to native youngsters.
The overhaul of the Pyramid, its inside presently “hermetically sealed and inaccessible” per MVRDV, can be a dramatic one though the constructing’s concrete shell can be preserved. A large number of modular containers containing particular person programmatic areas can be “positioned inside, upon, and across the current construction” to create a dynamic “village” composed of school rooms, cafes, and studios in keeping with the agency. The darkish and cavernous principal inside area can be opened up and transformed right into a light-filled atrium.
The sloping concrete beams can be, as talked about, left intact and transformed into exterior staircases in order that the general public can proceed, as specified by Veliaj, to scale—and slide down, on one single beam—the construction, albeit in a safer and extra organized vogue. As famous by MVRDV, the exterior staircases assist to protect “the appropriating [of the former dictatorial monument] that started with the residents of Tirana” whereas remodeling the stair-clad constructing right into a venue for open-air occasions and touristic sightseeing alternatives. On the landscaping entrance, plans to cloak the largely vegetation-free web site with bushes and greenery will additional enhance its enchantment as a spot for the general public to congregate.
Mentioned Winy Maas, founding associate of MVRDV, in an announcement:
“Engaged on a brutalist monument just like the Pyramid is a dream. It’s putting and attention-grabbing to see how the nation struggled with the way forward for the constructing, which on one hand is a controversial chapter within the nation’s historical past, and however has already been partly reclaimed by the residents of Tirana. I instantly noticed its potential, and that it needs to be doable to make it much more of a ‘folks’s monument’ as a substitute of demolishing it. The difficult half is to create a brand new relationship between the constructing and its environment. I’m assured our design establishes this. I’m wanting ahead to seeing younger folks and for the primary time older folks climbing the steps to the rooftop!”
The transformation of the Pyramid of Tirana—a mission that “exhibits how a constructing could be made appropriate for a brand new period, whereas on the identical time preserving its complicated historical past, and demonstrates that historic brutalist buildings are perfect for reuse” per MVRDV”—appears to have been warmly obtained by residents of town, a lot of whom have rallied towards plans to raze, as a substitute of repurposing, different decrepit however culturally vital constructions within the capital. Living proof: Final Might’s demolition of the historic Nationwide Theatre of Albania (Teatri Kombëtar) sparked heated—and at occasions violent—confrontations between protestors and police and result in mass arrests. The enduring theater, erected in 1939 throughout the Italian occupation of Albania, can be changed with a bowtie-shaped, Bjarke Ingels Group-designed cultural middle.