Starchitects, Protests and a Museum of Dreams: Inside Albania's Building Boom

Albanian prime minister Edi Rama has launched or backed more than 50 international architecture competitions over 26 years — and 48 of them were won by foreign architects, according to Adelina Greca, head of the government's National Territorial Planning Agency. Only two went to Albanian firms working alone. That imbalance is now at the center of violent unrest in Tirana.

Rama, 62, a working artist and former professional basketball player, has spent 13 years as prime minister remaking the country with imported design talent: Bjarke Ingels, Alejandro Aravena (Pritzker Prize, 2016), MVRDV, Stefano Boeri, Herzog & de Meuron, OMA and Diller Scofidio & Renfro among them. "Architecture," Rama said in an interview, "has the power to change societies. It's like a strong medicine. It can heal, or it can kill."

The timing of that statement is the story. When protesters began demanding Rama's resignation last May, he was preparing to host his second annual gathering of international architects, held June 3–5. The event drew demonstrators carrying signs reading "Starchitects go home!" — a prelude to the violent clashes of October and November, which police answered with tear gas and rubber bullets, and which authorities say left hundreds injured.

What does the boom look like on the ground?

Tirana, a city of about 600,000 in a country of about 2.3 million, now displays the results in its compact center:

• A "vertical forest" skyscraper laden with trees and shrubs by Italian architect Stefano Boeri
• A bright red Marriott by fellow Italian Marco Casamonti
• The Plaza Hotel by Johan Anrys of Belgian firm 51N4E, elliptical at its base, rectangular at its crown
• A condominium by MVRDV shaped like a human head, its balconies resolving into a pronounced nose; the architects call it Skanderbeg, the 15th-century military hero, though some Albanians think it resembles Rama himself. Rama dismisses both readings as "urban legends." "It's the form of a man through history," he said, adding: "It also looks like you."

Not everything survived the unrest intact. Protesters vandalized the Tirana Pyramid — originally built as a memorial to dictator Enver Hoxha, who died in 1985, and converted into a public amenity by MVRDV. An information kiosk on Skanderbeg Square was set on fire. On October 20, the Boulevard of Martyrs of the Nation was missing hundreds of paving stones pried up by crowds; some storefronts that escaped damage bore signs reading, "Don't target us. We are with you."

Why do protesters resent the foreign architects?

The numbers explain part of the anger, but not all of it. Accusations of money laundering and corruption grew louder in late May, when Rama agreed to support a plan by a company associated with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump to build luxury resorts on undeveloped land. The architecture conference opened days later, and the demand for starchitects to leave became entangled with environmental and anti-Trump sentiment in what protesters dubbed the Flamingo Revolution.

Rama's answer to local critics is blunt. The only Albanian architects who object, he said — on the record, and perhaps unwisely — are "the mediocre ones." The rest, he argues, benefit from first-rate foreign firms raising everyone's game, as Chinese architects did when China gave its major commissions to Western firms 20 years ago.

Anrys, who arrived 22 years ago as one of the first foreign architects in Albania, pushed back on the accusation that outsiders take work from locals. He acknowledged that Albanian colleagues ask, "Are we not good enough?" but said: "It isn't true. I have a studio in Tirana with 20 Albanian architects." Foreign architects, he said, have "brought Albanian architects more work than we've taken." Greca went further: "If we continue this kind of cooperation, there will come a day when Albanian architects will win competitions not only here but around the world." Her closeness to Rama has nonetheless made her a target — during a lunchtime march, march organizer Gent Progni posted a photo of Greca on Instagram accusing her of using a disabled journalist as cover to spy on protesters. The post drew nearly 7,000 likes.

How much of the boom is actually built?

Very little, by the bookkeeping of Anneke Abhelakh, a European journalist and curator whose recent volume The Albanian Files lists more than 500 projects by 60 foreign firms — of which only about one-tenth have been realized. Rama himself concedes the shortfalls. He complained about a developer who clad a building in real stone "until a certain altitude" and then switched to a printed imitation. Other buildings stand partially complete, or complete and eerily empty; in several cases developers swapped foreign architects for local ones midstream to avoid meeting the original specifications. "Certain architecture needs a certain quality," Rama said. "But compromises are forced by the limitations of the place."

What happens next?

Rama, who won the most recent election by the largest majority of his career, says he is not going anywhere — and he wants to expand the celebration of his foreign collaborators. He is considering turning The Albanian Files into a museum, one room per firm, showing drawings, models and photographs on a site he says he has already secured. He calls it "a big store of dreams, hopes and challenges, illusions and delusions. It will be a great place to go." Its designer, naturally, will be chosen by international competition. Whether Tirana's streets stay quiet enough for that competition to be judged is the question the prime minister's museum plans do not answer.