Landscape Architecture Frontiers

Tirana, capital of Albania, is a city where voices are silenced and identities remain opaque. With a tumultuous and dark history, Tirana’s political landscape, which is inherent to public trust, has been fractured. Then, how can the public realm be reconceived to better express individual and collective voices? This project explores how cultural forms of identity, memory, and voice found in Albanian textiles can be interpreted at the urban scale. The master plan currently implemented in the city scarcely recognizes public spaces but allocates new poly-center developments. Grounding the project in one of these poly-centers, a derelict textile factory, cultural memory is interpreted, extracted, and manifested in a multi-faceted urban development. Such a process aims to operate as a business incubator, housing and public space, community agriculture, and transitoriented development. This project aspires to reposition the city’s history by excavating the past through soil remediation, new forms of labor, and community development. Unlocking this memory and restructuring its texture will form a liberated, vocal, and free public realm.