2.2.2 Identification and the performance of the cultural heritage in Tirana

2.2.2 Identification and the performance of the cultural heritage in Tirana

Selected projects analyzed in this study, tackle the delicate problem of the transformation and integration of modern buildings, a practice that is now widespread in the Albanian capital, but perhaps not sufficiently debated: just think of the "style" extension of the Tirana town Municipality in 2004 , to projects for the Parliament house, to the expansion and functional adaptation of the Bank of Albania.

The buildings taken into consideration are the Placetenential Building, currently the ministerial complex and for which the current Town urban Plan provides for an expansion, the former Skanderbeg Circle, intended for demolition frequently, for which reuse is instead assumed as a "museum of city "in analogy to the function of "City Palace "foreseen in 1943, and the Ex. Hotel Dajti, whose possible adaptation (actually owned by the Bank of Albania), is verified while maintaining its hotel destination, a function entered in the collective memory that has assumed a value over time symbolic.

In these cases analyzed in this study, the extensions and additions are interpreted not as additions to parts of buildings, but as stylobates, podiums, wings, excavations, which relate the existing building to the open space and measure the surrounding void. The modeling and excavation of the bases allows you to create open but delimited spaces, conquering a condition of interiority and closure.

For example, in the project for the expansion of the Ex. LieutenancyBuilding, a great emergence stands out on an excavated stylobate ground. Thus we work on a double register: the small scale of the city with enclosed spaces and the large scale of the new urban landscape, where the isolated volumes and the great void are no longer deaf towards each other, but enter into mutual tension. . In their architectural definition these projects want to interpret and give shape to that double soul of Albanian architecture that appears clearly in the construction of traditional houses, where the use of the stone that roots the building on the ground and the use of wood coexist. or in any case light systems, which delimit the places of living.