Rinia Park in the shadow of the tower, the peak of Tirana’s urban destruction

By Blerina Gjoka

A white mass of concrete, with curved forms and supported on a row of columns, hovers like a giant cloud over Rinia Park.

This is the view offered by the visualisations of the project for a new 78-metre-high tower, designed by the Danish studio Bjarke Ingels Group, BIG, declared on Thursday the winner of an international competition for the development of the plot where the “Taiwan” complex is located.

Prime Minister Edi Rama presented the project as a “new dream” for Tirana and claimed that the intervention would increase the green areas and the presence of water in the park.

But for urban planners, architects and critics of Tirana’s development model, the project represents the opposite. They say that this is another step towards the final concretisation of the city centre and the alienation of one of the few public and green spaces left to the capital.

“It can be considered a peak in the sense of the urban destruction of the city, which also coincides with a peak in the psychological sense of Edi Rama’s delirium of omnipotence, with a peak of the greed of the oligarchs who will be involved there and with a peak of the shamelessness before the citizens of Tirana of the architects of Albanian Files,” Lubonja told BIRN, referring to the controversial book by the Dutch scholar Anneke Abhelakh, which summarises the reflections of the international architecture studios that have designed or built in Albania during Edi Rama’s time as prime minister.

He sees the announcement of the project, at a time when protests against the government have been taking place in Tirana for months, as a “political challenge to the citizens”.

The construction of high towers has over the last two decades become one of the main elements of Tirana’s transformation — a vision that Rama began to articulate as mayor and continued to promote afterwards as prime minister.

For critics of this model, the tower in Rinia Park marks a new point of intervention in the historical and social structure of the city.

Architect and urban planner Doriana Musai, meanwhile, raises questions about the planning and legal basis of the project.

According to her, such a development is not foreseen in the current planning documents of the Municipality of Tirana and conflicts with the historical and cultural status of the area.

“This project conflicts with the plan approved by the Tirana Municipal Council with public hearings, according to a democratic process, on which the authority of the government from above is superimposed,” she told BIRN.

Musai described the tower as “an elephant in a china shop”, which according to her endangers not only Rinia Park, but also the urban relationship with the “Shallvare” and “Agimi” residential-block ensembles.

“The killing” of the city

What Rama has described over the years as an “architectural renaissance” has materialised in Tirana through a large number of towers, multi-storey projects and major urban redevelopments.

Critics say that this model has often come at the expense of public spaces, greenery and the historical memory of the city.

The Rinia Park area was envisaged as a central green space as early as in Tirana’s urban plan of 1931, in the period when the boulevard and the monumental centre of the capital took shape.

In the early years of the communist regime, trees were planted in the park through the voluntary work of young people, from which it also took the name “Rinia Park” (Youth Park). Later, the well-known “Taiwan” complex was built there.

After the 1990s, the park was filled with unauthorised constructions. In 2000, shortly after Rama was elected mayor of Tirana, the informal buildings were demolished and the space was returned to public use.

Today, Rinia Park remains one of the few green spaces in the city centre. It is used as a meeting place, a recreational space for children and families, and a landmark for residents and tourists.

The park is also part of Tirana’s historical ensemble and enjoys protection status as a second-category cultural monument, while in the General Local Plan it is defined as a green zone.

According to Musai, the new project fundamentally changes the nature of this space.

“We are moving from a free place, where people can enter without having to pay, to a private park of the tower,” she said.

According to her, after the construction of the complex, the park risks losing the function it has today as a public destination independent of commercial activities.

The tower is planned to rise on the plot of the “Taiwan” complex, a public property privatised in 2009. But Musai argues that the status of private ownership does not automatically create the right to development contrary to the public interest and the urban function of the area.

“The law on territorial planning provides provisions for the transfer of the right to development, precisely in order to avoid construction within public areas,” she said.

Urban planner Imeldi Sokoli sees the project also beyond the debate about green surface or building intensity.

According to him, the intervention touches the collective memory of the city, since Rinia Park is a space that intertwines urban, social and cultural functions created over decades.

“It is a violation of the collective memory of the city of Tirana,” Sokoli told BIRN. “This intervention for the alienation of this public space and, even more, the concretisation of this space is urban, but also social and cultural destruction in relation to the city.”

According to him, the loss of such places takes away from the city one of the most important functions of public spaces, including the possibility for residents to meet, interact and create social relationships outside the logic of consumption.

Urban planners see similarities between the debate over Rinia Park and the conflict that began in 2013 around Gezi Park in Istanbul, where a development project in a historic park became the spark of mass protests against the Turkish government.

“There is a parallel in the disappearance of collective memory, but in Rama’s case I think the capture of power and, even more, of the instruments of territorial planning is absolute, where decision-making belongs only to the National Council of Territory, which has the competence to infringe the local general plans,” Sokoli said.

Musai, too, sees the similarity mainly in the way decisions are made.

“Gezi Park and Rinia Park have development projects that come from the top down, in an undemocratic way and without involving the community,” she concluded.