BIG Wins Tirana Competition with Cloud-Like Fountain Tower

BIG has won the international competition to design the Tirana Fountain Tower, a cloud-like mixed-use building that will hover on slim white columns above Rinia Park in the Albanian capital.

The scheme, revealed by the architecture studio, will contain apartments, offices, a hotel and cultural spaces, while keeping the ground level largely open as public space. Rows of perforated white disks will line the glazed facades and animate the interiors. Two curved volumes wrapped in fluted glass at either end will connect the elevated building to the ground.

Renders place the tower at the edge of Rinia Park on Rruga Sami Frashëri, where the Taiwan Center restaurant complex and the adjacent Taiwan Pool water feature currently stand.

What does the design do for the park?

BIG said it aimed to improve the natural landscape of Rinia Park by surrounding the tower with planted gardens and adding rainwater management features. The studio will preserve the existing Taiwan Pool and capture, store and reuse its water in a closed-loop system.

The design irrigates the landscape to reduce flood risk in the area and cool the surrounding park, according to the studio.

"Awarded first place in the international competition for Tirana Fountain Tower, BIG's proposal expands the landscape of Rinia Park beneath and around a new mixed-use development in the heart of Tirana," said BIG.

"The project transforms a privately operated site into a new cultural and mixed-use destination, introducing gardens, plazas, water features, and gathering spaces that connect the park to the Lana River while preserving the historic fountain," the studio continued.

Who did BIG beat?

BIG confirmed the shortlist it defeated: "Selected from a shortlist including Cobe, Barozzi Veiga, l'AUC, and JDSA, the design brings architecture, landscape, and water management together as a single civic experience."

The jury's decision gives BIG a fourth significant presence in and around Tirana. The tower will stand near the Pyramid of Tirana, a former museum converted into a cultural hub by MVRDV in 2023.

Elsewhere in the city, BIG is building the bow-tie-shaped National Theatre of Albania — a project that drew controversy in 2020, when activists were arrested protesting the demolition of the original 1930s theatre to make way for the new construction.

In October 2025, the studio also unveiled plans for a cluster of interfaith pavilion buildings threaded through a hillside near Tirana.

With the Fountain Tower, BIG now shapes culture, worship and performance in the Albanian capital simultaneously — and the closed-loop water system will test whether a privately driven tower can measurably improve the public park beneath it.