inside albania’s creative construction boom, through the eyes of global architects

A New Chapter for Albania’s Skyline

Albania is now witnessing an influx of ambitious projects, many by world-renowned international architects, that begin to redefine the skylines of Tirana and beyond. Albania’s Prime Minister, and former Tirana mayor, Edi Rama, has even pointed out that ‘Albania produces more architecture than the rest of Europe,’ a claim that reflects a construction frenzy that has made architecture one of the most visible symbols of change in the country.

designboom discusses this creative boom with key figures shaping Albania’s transformation, including Stefano Boeri, MVRDV’s Winy Maas, Christian Kerez, Beat Huesler of Oppenheim Architecture, and the team at Bofill Taller de Arquitectura, to explore how global architecture is helping redraw the cultural and urban landscape of the country.

Pyramid of Tirana by MVRDV (read more here) | image © Ossip van Duivenbode

how leadership, planning, and global talent reshape a country

A former artist, Rama prioritized urban revitalization since his mayoral tenure in the early 2000s. He famously beautified drab facades with vibrant colors and cleared illegal structures, setting the stage for larger transformations. After becoming prime minister, Rama launched the Tirana of the New Generation initiative in 2014, personally inviting 32 international architects to reimagine the capital. Around the same time, Tirana’s government commissioned Italian architect and urban planner Stefano Boeri to craft the Tirana 2030 Master Plan, envisioning sustainable growth, vertical development, and a massive ‘orbital forest.’ Boeri describes the city as ‘the most interesting and up-to-date, and therefore the most controversial and debatable, museum of contemporary architecture in the world,’ arguing that the sheer number and speed of projects have turned Tirana into an urban school of architecture in real time. ‘Our studio Stefano Boeri Architetti, which, in addition to the 2030 Master Plan, has already completed six buildings for Tirana and is building and designing another six, is therefore now fully involved, both as a student and as a teacher, in this International Urban School of Architecture,’ he tells us.

Swiss architect Christian Kerez compares the rapid transformation of the country to early-2000s China, noting, ‘You feel an energy and vitality, which is not abstract, but you can feel in the daily life.’ What sets Albania apart, he shares with designboom, is that the transformation is curated from the top: ‘It is curated by the highest governmental official, the prime minister, Edi Rama. He is personally supervising the architectural projects for all large and exposed plots.’

Today, a mix of completed landmarks, active construction sites, and visionary proposals illustrates Albania’s unique creative surge. From repurposed communist monuments to futuristic towers and ‘vertical villages,’ these projects showcase a country in architectural flux.

Red Sol Resort by Bofill Taller de Arquitectura (read more here) | image courtesy of the architects

Built Landmarks

MVRDV’s transformation of the former Pyramid of Tirana into a vibrant youth cultural center is one of the most symbolic of Albania’s design renaissance. The brutalist landmark was preserved and reactivated with colorful, climbable structures that house tech classrooms and public gathering spaces, a clear nod to the power of adaptive reuse. Winy Maas, co-founder of the international architecture and urbanism office, reflects on this reinvention as a gesture of pride and contextual storytelling. ‘With the Pyramid of Tirana, we monumentalized the history of the building and its changed relationship with Tirana’s citizens,’ he reflects. Topped out in 2020, Downtown One, also by MVRDV, soars with cantilevered balconies shaped into a pixel map of the country – a literal vertical Albania. ‘Our projects near Skanderbeg Square make direct references to Albania’s history and geography – Downtown One with its map, the Skanderbeg Building with the statue of the former hero,’ Maas tells us.

Elsewhere in the city, built projects reveal how this architectural shift extends into public space, everyday life, and symbolic form. Stefano Boeri’s Blloku Cube introduces a compact yet highly visible intervention in Tirana’s once-restricted district, using iridescent surfaces and transparency to signal the transformation of the area into a hub for the creative economy. At the civic scale, 51N4E’s redesign of Skanderbeg Square performs a more radical act by removing traffic altogether, reshaping the city’s central plaza into a pedestrian landscape where architecture recedes in favor of collective use, ceremony, and urban calm.

This logic of hybridity carries through Archea Associati’s Air Albania Stadium, where sport, commerce, and hospitality are compressed into a single composition. Nearby, Studio Libeskind’s Magnet Residences extend symbolic thinking into the domestic realm, abstracting the Albanian eagle into curving residential forms organized around shared green spaces.

Stefano Boeri’s Blloku Cube (read more here) | image courtesy of the architects

Approved & Under Construction

A generation of next-wave architecture is rising across Tirana and beyond. BIG’s design for the new National Theatre broke ground in 2022 and introduces a dramatic bowtie-shaped cultural facility that anchors a new arts quarter. OODA’s Hora Vertikale rethinks the tower as a vertical neighborhood, stacking 13 modular volumes into a staggered, plant-covered form. Mount Tirana, designed by CEBRA, abstracts the silhouette of Albania’s mountains into a jagged vertical profile that could one day become the country’s tallest structure.

Steven Holl’s Expo Albania reimagines a conventional convention center as a sculptural pair of signature buildings linked by landscape and light. Oppenheim Architecture, deeply embedded in Albania’s urban evolution, is advancing the New Boulevard Tower and the Vlora Beach Tower. ‘Albania’s creative boom carries a remarkable openness, a moment where the spirit of place is being rediscovered while the country transforms at great speed. What compels us as international practitioners is the chance to learn from context and to build with the land not on the land, embracing honesty in materials and the quiet power already present,’ notes Beat Huesler, director of the team at Oppenheim Architecture Europe. ‘Our work there seeks a kind of silent monumentality, architecture that responds to this energy with humility and clarity, allowing the landscape and culture to lead.”

Christian Kerez emphasizes that realizing these designs requires long-term commitment. ‘It is easy to make a rendering and very hard and difficult to build,’ he says. ‘We always follow closely the steps from concept design to site supervision.’ This level of dedication led him to open an office in Albania, where he now spends half his time.

New Boulevard Tower by Oppenheim Architecture (read more here) | rendering by MIR

Visionary Proposals

Some of the most speculative and exhilarating designs remain on the drawing board. MVRDV’s Grand Ballroom, a spherical sports arena wrapped in apartments, challenges the typology of stadiums by merging culture, housing, and entertainment into one orbital gesture. For Maas, it is another part of Tirana’s urban narrative: ‘The Grand Ballroom acts as another part of the Tirana collection, showing the city’s ambitions and creating another landmark.’

Bofill Taller de Arquitectura, whose recent and forthcoming work spans the Albanian Riviera and the capital, engages both topography and skyline without imposing a singular formal language. The studio frames its Albanian projects as site-specific responses to radically different landscapes, from steep coastal cliffs to dense urban contexts. ‘The landscapes of Albania are all completely different,’ the architects note, ‘so naturally each project is approached in a completely different manner. We want to find the unique spirit of a place, and in Albania we have been given the freedom to do this.’ This attitude underpins a body of work that resists iconic repetition in favor of contextual continuity. ‘There has always been the temptation for an architect to plant their flag over the landscape,’ the team tells designboom. ‘We don’t approach architecture in this way. We aim for buildings that are of their context and actively looking to improve it, whether that’s bettering access, encouraging wildlife, or providing social space for the community.’

Boeri describes these proposals as part of Tirana’s unique urban ecosystem. ‘Ideas are transformed into urban artifacts with unexpected speed. Mineral artifacts, traversed by everyday life.’ he shares with us.

MVRDV’s Grand Ballroom (read more here) | image © Antonio Luca Coco, Angelo La Delfa, Luana La Martina, Jaroslaw Jeda, Stefano Fiaschi, Ciprian Buzdugan

building identity in real time

Almost every architect designboom spoke with pointed to the role of Edi Rama as an unprecedented figure in contemporary development. As Christian Kerez observes, ‘What is different from any country I know about this process of transformation is that it is curated by the highest governmental official (…) He is personally supervising the architectural projects for all large and exposed plots.’ For many, this direct involvement has helped turn architectural competitions and urban policy into a live cultural project. Bofill Taller de Arquitectura describes the boom as ‘a moment of rebirth’ enabled by Rama’s leadership, a system that ‘allows and values creative freedom.’

Winy Maas highlights how Albania offers national identity expressed through architecture. ‘Instead of producing safe, boring buildings that make every city look the same, Albania is incentivising creative innovation,’ he tells designboom. But he also sees deeper implications. The creative boom, he argues, is not just about buildings but about pride and cultural presence within Europe. ‘How does a country like Albania maintain its individual identity in a Union that features so many wealthier, larger, more populous nations? Architecture is one way.’ he tells designboom. Stefano Boeri, too, frames Albania as a model for international practice: ‘Tirana and Albania are now a real-time laboratory for the most advanced ideas in contemporary architecture… a true School where architecture can be simultaneously learned and taught.’

SIMA Tower by Christian Kerez

Steven Holl Architects’ Expo Albania (read more here) | render by the architects

Papuli Tower by Bofill Taller de Arquitectura

Mount Tirana by CEBRA (read more here) | image courtesy of the architects

CHYBIK + KRISTOF (CHK)’s ODA Tirana (read more here) | image courtesy of the architects

Veterinary Hospital in Tirana by Davide Macullo Architects (read more here) | image courtesy of the architects

Tirana’s Selman Stërmasi Stadium revitalization by OMA (read more here) | image courtesy of OMA

Valona Hills I-Cones by Davide Macullo Architects

Tirana 2030 by Stefano Boeri

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