TIR / Tirana Park City

Our project articulates the idea of a series of urban follies in a park. Places to meet and gather in the surroundings of trees, on the edge of the city fabric. Those buildings if they are of substantial size, each manage to weave themselves with public spaces to deconstruct their monumentality: the entrance University functions are literally excavated to let mother Theresa square continue towards the park, the Police Headquarters waves up and down to minimize its impact and frames a protected Oasis in its center and the Public Service building evolves as a roof plaza to offer views to the lake and the park.

The buildings punctuate the city road and create the transition from the city fabric to the park. They alternate with the park in order to allow breathing spaces to permeate into the city. Each building is an interpretation of a cylinder geometry: once excavated, once enforced in plan but softened in section, once inverted into a star shape. Each of those manipulation come from a reasoning between each building’s immediate context and its program: the University building wants to be a gate and therefore frame its environment while it needs to be permeable, the police facilities is a more protected entity and the public services should feel transparent, open and inviting to and from its multiple adjacencies.