Edifice in Albania
Venice Architecture Biennale and Bread&Heart Festival
Edifice in Albania
There is a post-dictatorial, young-democratic growth spurt happening in Albania at the moment, and we are observing its progress in real time. This season alone, the country’s urban (and ideological) up-shooting was charted by two major events in the architectural calendar: the international stage of the 19th Venice Biennale of Architecture and the local setting of Tirana’s Bread&Heart Festival. Both show a nation reimagining its built environment, as architects around the globe – the Taller included – are given room to explore a mature, more "urbane" Albania.
Forty-five years after Paolo Portoghesi invited the group to his inaugural architectural exposition in Venice, the Biennale has featured the Taller in its 19th edition as part of the Albanian Pavilion. The display, titled Building Architecture Culture – after the inseparability of a society and its structures – is conceived around three temporalities: past, present, and future; charting the country’s architectural landscape over time.
The first chapter is told by a timeline of 100 images, mapped across two politically charged sites in Tirana: Skanderbeg Square and the Pyramid. The second, a film titled The Albanian Calls, captures conversations with 50 practices currently shaping the built environment. Finally, the pavilion looks ahead through stereoscopic viewers, presenting speculative proposals and research led by Elia Zenghelis (of OMA).
Above, right, below: Installation view, Albanian Pavilion, La Biennale di Venezia 2025. Photos by Andrea Rossetti. Courtesy of the Albanian Pavilion 2025
The first Bread&Heart Festival took place in Tirana in early June, launching what hopes to become a biannual gathering. Its aim was to bring together international architects and guests with local artists, sociologists, urban planners, and others engaged in the nation's development to establish a community in the heart of the capital. With an imaginative programme of roundtables, workshops, exhibitions, performances, and communal meals, all centred on Albanian architectural discourse, the festival was met with great enthusiasm.
On display over the weekend were plaster-cast models of Barcelona Tower and Red Sol Resort, proposals for Skanderbeg Square and the Albanian Riviera respectively. Other Taller projects ongoing in Albania include two mixed-use towers in central Tirana, a church to the south, a promenade to the west, and a second hotel resort along the southwestern coast.
