TIRANA, April 24 – Tirana’s ground-floor life will represent Albania at this year’s edition of the Venice Biennale of Architecture through installations and pictures showcasing the capital city’s urban environment, history and tradition though the old Tirana doors as an element to explain a space where the old and modern co-exist.
The series of doors installed in the ‘’Zero Space’’, aligns the transition between indoor and outdoor in the contemporary urban context of Tirana, characterized by the presence of many shops, workshops, bars, distributed all over the city and serving the city almost 24 hours, says the four young architects representing Albania.
Whether being served in a cafeteria or at a shoemaker, barber shop, tailor or even butcher, this level, simply, slowly, in its own pace but at the same time in a chaos which with its spontaneous evolution, differently from the classic planning of the territory, has created the city where the public space is similar to a physical social media, with its feet on the ground.
The Albanian pavilion at the 16th Venice Biennale of Architecture has been dedicated to research into Tirana’s ground floor as a hyperbole of a phenomenon scattered throughout Albania.
Tirana citizens usually project their lives between the safety of the ground floor where they freely interact with each-other and the frenzy of a metropolis whose economy grows and adapts more and more to the global trend, the architects say.
Every neighborhood in the capital city keeps alive their ‘ground floor’ adding to the undisputed comfort, the security of a social relationship guaranteed by the human dimension of the classical next-door shop, an approach adopted in every kind of service and every areas of the city.
The Albanian pavilion has been named ‘Tirana Zero Space’ and is described as contribution to the city involving Tirana residents with an active participation at the Venice Biennale
The pavilion is a moment of reflection over Tirana’s lifestyle and the future of Albania’s capital city. Tirana’s personality and strength are featured in an installation where visitors can live through the experience of Albania’s capital city the same way as its citizens do.
The Albanian pavilion’s philosophy is to shape and model the lifestyle and propose that citywide, nationwide and beyond.
The installation reflects and interprets the spontaneous Tirana life landscape, captures a moment from its influx and introduces it to the Biennale public.
“We think that nothing better than this form of visual art could interpret our city’s resistance toward the loss of the sense of time, an obvious sign of ‘liquid modernity,” says Elton Koritari, the Albanian pavilion’s curator.
“The Biennale can be the pretext for tribute to a city that though runs normally towards its modernization and transformation into a ‘Generic City,’ jealously preserves its bottom-up antibodies-elements that still foster it from becoming ‘Junk space,’ he adds.
Tirana Mayor Erion Veliaj says he is happy Albania will be represented with Tirana and its lively and challenging story at the international event.
“As part of my work, I often happen to meet mayors of much more developed cities who have well-established infrastructure with trams, undergrounds, luxury buildings, modern infrastructure streets, but have no life. If I had to choose between Tirana of many infrastructural challenges and a city of perfect infrastructure but no life where everything closes down at 5 pm I would undoubtedly choose Tirana,” says Veliaj.
Culture Minister Mirela Kumbaro said this edition’s Albania project offers both ideas and citizenship.
“Ground floor is where everything happens with the noisy and quiet Tirana, the images and voices of common people through the city streets and we all want to display that as a passport in this global architecture exhibition,” says Kumbaro.
In selecting the winning project last January, the jury said “it was inspired by the team’s proposed linkage between Venice and Tirana to bring a piece of the urban setting of Tirana to Venice, a piece Tirana is losing in the process of urban expansion and reconstruction.”
Albania’s capital since 1920, soon after the country’s independence Tirana offers a mix of traditional, Italian and totalitarian architecture mixed with modern buildings and high-rises.
Albania has regularly participated at the Venice Biennale of Architecture since its 2010 debut.
“The desire to create Freespace can become the specific individual characteristic of each individual project. But space, free space, public space can also reveal the presence or absence of architecture, if we understand architecture to be ‘thinking applied to the space where we live, that we inhabit;” says Venice Biennale President Paolo Baratta.
This year’s edition of the Biennale, titled Freespace” and focusing on the question of space, the quality of space, open and free space will run for six months starting May 26 to November 25 with 71 national participants.
