TIRANA, March 14 – Albania’s Prime Minister Edi Rama presented on Monday the new National Theater construction project, despite protests by actors and citizens in February over the government’s plans to tear down the historical building and give part of its land to private companies to build private buildings in order to raise funds.
The new theater is designed by the Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) and it has already been criticized for looking like a 2011 proposal of Forma Architects for the Busan Opera House of South Korea.
Analysts have also commented on Rama’s relation with BIG going back to when Rama was Tirana’s mayor and held an architecture contest for a mosque in Tirana which BIG won but was never realized.
For the National Theater, however, Rama did not declare a contest or set up space for public debate, but is rather planning to approve a new law that will allow construction on public property.
During the project presentation at the Centre for Openness and Dialogue, Rama argued it is “impossible” to renovate the theater originally built under the Italian occupation and that it is instead better to spend on a public-private partnership (PPP) with companies involved in government tenders.
At the end of his speech, Rama said he would pass a “special law” in the Albanian parliament for the project’s construction, even though it is unprecedented that another construction project in Tirana had to pass through the parliament.
Analysts have said the reason Rama needs to do this is because construction for the National Theater lies on the most costly piece of land in Tirana, currently owned by Tirana’s municipality but intended to be of little service to the general public – as the National Theatre’s project occupies only half of the surface – and more as the space for the construction of a high-rise apartment/shopping complex.
Private construction on public property, however, is illegal, and the decision to expropriate the land can only be taken by the Municipal Council currently caught in political disarray.
For this reason, analysts have said, Rama’s plan to construct the project through a new law passed by a parliament the majority of which he control is undemocratic, to say the least.
BIG, on the other hand, has said the construction will provide Albanians with a much needed meeting space.
“Our design for the new National Theater of Albania will continue the city’s effort for making Tirana’s public spaces more inviting and its public institutions more transparent,” said Bjarke Ingels in a public statement.
