Tirana “Plan, Build, Live,” Everyday life in Albania’s capital city
VIENNA, July 13 – The “Architektur im Ringturm” series of exhibitions hosted by the Vienna Insurance Group continues its architectural journey of exploration through Central and Southern Europe by focusing on another southerly area of “terra incognita” in Europe that lies where the Adriatic meets the Mediterranean. Planning, building and living in Tirana – the capital of the little-known country of Albania – is the topic of this exhibition and publication which is being displayed in Vienna from July 13.
The exhibition curated by Adolph Stiller, Katia Accossato will be open until September 17, organizers said in a statement. It features photos of Tirana starting from 1910 when it started being shaped as a city to recent modern buildings.
With regard to various aspects of the city’s current urban planning, its public spaces and its incredible dynamism, as illustrated by the large number of “informal” constructions in the city, use is made of historical urbanisation concepts to throw light on the reasons it has developed in the way it has. With the use of large format pictures, a visual dialog between historical illustrations and contemporary images depicts a structural reality that is difficult to visualise in plans. A special visualisation bar conveys the diverse and colourful Mediterranean life in the city in the form of a contemporary travelogue.
The exhibition aims to make the reality of Tirana, which is quite difficult to understand, more tangible by providing a visual dialogue in the form of large-format images. Old images from the largest historical collection in the country by Artan Lame are linked to specially produced contemporary images.
Tirana, a planning laboratory
Until the late 1980s, 35 percent of Albania’s population were farmers and the country had a strict anti-urbanisation policy. In less than two decades, Albania’s society changed dramatically and 60 percent of the population now lives in cities. On the basis of figures provided by the National Statistical Office, migration into the capital city of Tirana has increased by 7 to 9 percent each year since the early 1990s. The poorly equipped city administrators were taken completely unawares by this huge pressure, which was the result of private initiative.
Nowadays, Tirana has expanded to at least twice its former size and the population has more than tripled. Furthermore, the capital has combined with the new peripheries and the main port of the county, Durres, to form a metropolitan agglomeration. Suddenly a society that one imagines to be a strictly planned one has transformed into one in which there is no longer any room for planning. Over 500,000 illegal homes and businesses were rapidly constructed – alongside the boom in legal investments – all over the country, but mainly in the capital. In fact, a third of the entire population of Albania is concentrated in the metropolitan region of Albania.
Co-PLAN, a non-governmental organisation founded in the 1990s, which manages the structuring of informal habitat development, is concerned that three quarters of the population will be living here in the next 15 to 20 years – a heavy burden for society and the environment, if nothing else. As a result, Tirana may well be the most interesting “planning laboratory” in Europe.
There is currently no clear picture of Tirana in Central Europe. The dramatic explosion of the population, the fast pace of construction and the huge increase in traffic has barely been noticed, even though it is only 90 minutes from Vienna by plane.
PLAN
Looking at the interesting aspects of Tirana’s structural development, such as its incredible dynamism, its current urban planning and its large number of “informal” constructions, use is now being made of historical urbanisation concepts to throw light on the reasons it has developed in the way it has. For instance, historical relationships between Austria and Albania are notable. Austrian actions taken at the beginning of the 20th century, in particular, are still considered to be the first urban construction measures. At the end of the Balkan War, the Habsburg monarchy developed an increased military and diplomatic presence in Albania. Starting in the Northern Albanian city of Shkodra, where the military base was established, they became active across the entire country. The country was measured by the Military Geographic Institute, city plans were drawn up, administrative division was implemented on the basis of Austria’s own internal model and all localities were recorded in indexes which are still valid today. In Tirana, which was selected as the capital, a series of preliminary urban planning studies were carried out, which Austrian architects were involved in until the 1930s. For example, the Officers’ Casino, constructed in 1913 in the centre of the city (now a theatre) and the so-called American School were designed by Austrian architect Hans K
