Design competition launched for new Tirana mosque, museum

TIRANA, Feb. 21 – The Municipality of Tirana has officially launched an international design competition for the construction of a cultural complex made up of a new mosque and a joint Museum of Tirana history and religious harmony. In an announcement published on its website, the municipality invites architectural firms or individual architects to confirm their participation in the competition’s first stage until February 21. The project’s second stage will be begin on February 25, when the short-listed participants will be announced, and asked to submit design proposal by April 2, 2011.
The museum perceived to be built in the city centre will feature Tirana’s history, religious coexistence and religious persecution during the communist regime which banned religion for more than 20 years until 1990, making Albania the world’s first officially atheist country.
The Tirana museum, thought to be built next to the new mosque project in the city center, will be a 1,650 m2 building on a 13,200 m2 area. Tirana Mayor Edi Rama says the construction of the mosque would complete the triangle of religious institutions co-existing in Tirana along with the Orthodox Cathedral and the Catholic Church.
Next to the New Mosque, the Museum of Tirana and Religious Harmony will house the documented history of Tirana as well as the way it has voyaged, as an indivisible part and even essential in Tirana civic coexistence; coexistence among religions.
The design of the New Mosque and joint Museum of Tirana and its religious harmony will be based on the prepared and approved Master Plan of the Center of Tirana