Since then, the country has disappeared from the top headlines of the TV news - a good sign, since this means that there is nothing striking or exciting to report from the small Balkan state. In fact, the country has gone through a remarkable development in recent years - especially the capital Tirana, which has turned from a sleepy small town into one of the most dynamic and colourful metropolises of the Balkans.

It began as a colourful rejuvenating cure with a paint pot...
Colourful in the truest sense of the word: Edi Rama, who was elected mayor in 2000 and who is an artist himself, has prescribed a radical rejuvenating and renovating cure to the grey and run-down buildings of the city. The most obvious sign of the new course was the multi-coloured redesign of the facades of the old dull, grey houses. „When we painted the first building - violet and orange - I got a phone call: there are hundreds of people on the street, there is a traffic chaos. And everyone began to talk about colours!



It was the first time that people discussed about something that actually existed, and not about the quickest possible way to leave the country,” Rama says on the Architecture Biennale Rotterdam.

Thanks to Edi Rama’s projects - he was elected World Mayor in 2004 -, Tirana’s streets are now illuminated at night, illegally constructed buildings and kiosks were demolished and Tirana’s parks and green areas were expanded in the course of his „Clean and Green” project.

...followed by more profound conceptual renovation
Now the city’s main square - which is named after the Albanian national hero Skanderbeg - is set to be renovated. After an international tender, an international jury commissioned the Brussels-based architecture firm 51N4E to execute the project in cooperation with the Albanian artist Anri Sala. The concept of the Belgians managed to leave behind well-established architects such as the New Yorker Daniel Libeskind, Josep Lluis Mateo from Spain and the Dutch office MVRDV.
It became necessary to reconstruct the square, which harbours the opera, the national museum and the national bank, because the traffic of the metropolis, which is bursting at the seams, had increased drastically especially here, and because several buildings, constructed in the 1990s without a building permit, disfigured the grown and planned ensemble.
The concept for the square, which measures 170 by 170 metres, now envisions a total traffic calming. The central parts of the square are raised by three metres. „In the centre of a line of newly planted trees, a three-metre pyramid will be erected. In Tirana, buildings are constructed at an almost intimidating speed and we wanted to create a space which offers an escape from that overstrained city that is drowning in traffic”, John Anrys, one of the architects at 51N4E, explains.

ource: Property Jornal Polska Giełda Nieruchomości 04-05/09