Palimpsest of a Palace

Palimpsest of a Palace

A Re-Conception of Space and Narrative

Noemi Iten

HSG / ETH

Tirana,

August 2020

Dear faraway friend, I am writing you with a request. It has to do with my situation. For decades now I have been all alone most of the time. I know you have been forced to not see anyone for a while, but my solitude started long before the arrival of the virus and still continues. Only seldom people visit me, but at the end of the day they always have to leave. It used to be lively around here. Powerful people wanted to be in my company. I hosted kings and generals, judges and other high ranking officials. Now it’s mostly quiet. Only every now and then I receive guests, who are primarily interested in themselves, not in me. They take photos to post on social media. If you look carefully, you can see me in the background of their ‘selfies’. I often hardly recognize myself in the faint light.

Time hasn’t been kind to me. The faded colors, the cracks, my dull expression…

Despite the filters and visual effects, I’m only a vague shadow of my younger self. Stuck in splendid isolation, I spend my days staring out of the windows, scanning my surroundings for a sign of life. I see the cypresses waving in the wind. Clouds are drifting by, bringing rain from the nearby sea and mountains.

In recent years it has been increasingly dry. The sunlight scorches the grass, the soil has become sandy, the fountain stopped running. Hiding from the heat is impossible. The old curtains are insufficient to keep it outside and there’s no A/C here. I feel trapped and unable to change the conditions.

This is the story of my life. Built as a palace, as a splendid place of power, I became a paralyzing prison. Looking at the attached photos you might think I’m exaggerating. You see opulence and spatial quality. You might even imagine yourself walking down the red carpet and nestling in that chaise longue. But beauty bores you and comfort creates a sense confinement, when you have no control over your destiny. Next year I’m turning eighty.

Looking back on my long life I have come to realize that I have always been subordinated by others. From the royals who put me here, to the bureaucrats who keep people away from me, there is always someone or something preventing me from opening up and exploring the world. So please allow we to ask you this.

Can you help me to unlock this golden cage, and let life flow into these dark corridors? And help me realize my dream of seeing the world outside the garden, beyond the mountains of Albania, and connect to places that I only know from the old globe in my library.

Unfortunately you cannot visit me. But you can help me from a distance by contacting the Newrope - Chair of Architecture and Urban Transformation at ETH Zurich. They have offered to help me overcome my solitary confinement, with help of local experts, starting in the fall of 2020. I truly hope you and others can join them and I look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.

Sincerely yours, Pallati i Brigadave

Noemi Iten

Newrope Design Studio

Palimpsest of a palace

Noemi Iten

A Re-Conception of Space and Narrative

Tirana, Albania

HSG / ETH

Newrope Design Studio

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Sonila Abdalli Joni Baboci Falma Fashzi

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Hostel Owner of DESTIL and Architect, Albania Head of Urban Planning, Albania Researcher and Director of Communications for Albanian Prime Minister Office, Albania

Milena Dragićević Head of the UNESCO Chair in Cultural Policy and Management, Serbia Michiel van Iersel Urbanist, Curator and Program Lead at Newrope, Netherlands Fatos Lubonja

Former Political Prisoner and Activist

Arbjan Mazniku Deputy Mayor of Tirana, Albania Freek Persyn

Professor of Architecture at Newrope ETH, Switzerland Founding Partner of 51N4E, Brussels

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The biggest risk for Tirana is

privatisation.

Nowadays

only the streets

have remained

public.

Fatos Lubonja

Former Political Prisoner and Activist

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Foreword Journey

Visionary

Identity Isolation Deconstructing Beauty A Conversation Successful Paradox

Reality

Evaluation Creating Legitimacy References Index of images

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Foreword Upon receipt of the palace’s frantic letter, we - that is the ETH students, consulted actors and I, an economics student - promptly followed the quest to conceive an alternative, brighter future for the history-charged Palatti i Brigadave on the hills just outside the city centre of Tirana, Albania. As to deliberately avoid attention, the palace is hidden behind lush gardens, stone walls and locked doors. Throughout its complex past stretching monarchy, fascist dominance, communist rule and finally abandonment under democracy, the palace remained a symbol of unrealized power, isolation and visibility. In light of its present systemic and economic vague position, this has rendered the question of what the palace’s future narrative could be and who it should serve increasingly pressing.

We aimed to answer these questions as part of Newrope’s design studio this semester, guided by the belief that the inclusion of many is the only way for conceptions of the mind to attain the required legitimacy to act as catalyst for real change. Respecting citizens’ demands to halt the ongoing obliteration of architectural history in Tirana, we considered the palace’s history as a prized resource to be preserved in the process of constructive transformation. As a tabula rasa approach to architecture has been declared to be no longer viable (Alkemade et al., 2020), this studio was a deliberate exploration of the possibilities of its directly opposing tabula scripta methodology. The key challenge which emerged from our inquiries was how authenticity and identity might be preserved throughout the process of spatial transformation. We suggest to examine a building’s original ideas and objectives with great care through an uncompromising commitment to the interrogative to determine whether and how they should be revamped.

This text structures the participatory and imaginative design process the students engaged in when implementing these ambitions by incorporating a guiding, albeit subtle, strategic perspective. It shall ultimately provide the context in which the student’s proposals must be understood. This more thorough documentation was deemed necessary because of the selective use of oral and written accounts by the many activists, economists, urban planners and citizens consulted, causing the students’ proposals to be an abstraction of a much broader discussion potentially relevant to future actors of change. As it remained our goal that the resulting narrative speaks from and to those concerned with any spatial transformations of the palace, it appeared appropriate to respond in a literary manner. In a response letter to the palace, the students’ fragmented interventions for the palace’s new future are thus connected and further embedded in the relationship of the palace’s past and present. The letter is complemented by an outline for trajectories of realization in the critical analysis that ensues. According to this logic, the magazine is structured into the chapters of Journey, Visionary and Reality.

While both narration and strategy are ways to combine seemingly conflicting, eclectic realities that allow the transfer of clarity derived from one area into new ones where the subject matter is less orderly, a narrative may prove more convincing in outlining

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how we get to where we want to be when it shall address those subject to change, not those in charge. In drawing on Newrope’s idea of storytelling to develop a more narrative and holistic view of strategic discourse, this text also promotes the studio’s shared endeavour of rediscovering territory, both as a collective history and a common future by addressing issues of heritage, participation and ownership. We understood our common task then to be not exclusively about designing a new future but rather about creating the preconditions for a shared belief in it.

If desired, this project could be considered a product of Strategy in Practice and further subordinated to the rather emergent discipline of Strategic Spatial Planning. It might be worth noting that the aspiration to seek out a truly transdisciplinary dialogue between two unlike institutions arose from an unsettling sentiment that accumulated over my time at business university. Despite employing complicated analyses, conceptual frameworks and Design Thinking techniques, I still noticed a tendency amongst my equals to concern ourselves more with the politics of what is doable than the open space of what can be imagined, even if caused by rightful curricular requirements. I believe this project may serve as a testament of the potentialities that may arise from appropriately transgressing them, as evident in the following symbiotic consolidation of individual efforts into a grand, multifaceted total. Overall, this collaboration demonstrates how it might be possible to relieve the tension between the duty of strategists and architects alike to respect the genuine capitalist and historic constraints built environments (and enterprises) are subject to with the absolute necessity to think beyond them.

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Journey

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Garden View from Palace

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Garden Staircase in the Garden

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Basement Level Decay

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Ground Floor Convening Room

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Top Floor Ceiling

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Ground Floor Antechamber

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Entrance Stately Table

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Ground Floor Library

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First Floor Abandoned Room

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First Floor Bathroom

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Terrace View on Tirana from Terrace

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Top Floor Wintergarden

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First Floor Abandoned Powder Room

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Zurich, December 2020 Dear Palatti i Brigadave, As it was with much sorrow that we took note of your letter informing us about your desolation several weeks ago, we are more than delighted to finally write to you with good news. Over the past few weeks we spoke to many locals, foreigners and strangers about you, through whom we believe to have finally grasped the ambiguity surrounding you better. We believe this lengthy participatory process was crucial in our development of a comprehensive program for your future, as we were greatly concerned with the underlying legitimacy of the proposals that aim to realize your potential. A theme that appeared consistently throughout our exchanges was the contradictory accounts held of the past, conflicting conceptions of the present and dichotomous wishes for the future of you, Tirana and Albania in general. Quite early on it became a prominent demand that you should be freed from your self-imposed cage by making you more accessible, connected to the city and entertaining to the public while leaving open just how. One thing, however, was clear: your ownership should be placed back in people’s hands. Even so, particularly those closest to you, guarding you, opposed these demands strongly. Over concerns of the preservation of your historical value and heritage in light of any forthcoming transformation, they insisted on their preference to leave everything unchanged. However, instead of seeing these tensions between different logics as a hindrance, we tried to explore and see them as a resource.

I think it is fair to say that we now understand how your past necessitates your present and, in turn, your despair about the future. We understand how frustrated you must be that even though your façades are crumbling, your floors leaking, those in charge of you want to keep you just as you are – not for your sake, but theirs; to maintain their privilege, to maintain the past. Your present state does not do your beauty and heritage in any way justice, even they must know that. Of course, after all the turbulent times you lived through, witnessing the tyrannical behaviour of people of the same blood against each other in your own home, you had your hopes and trust in a better future deceived so many times that you stopped dreaming. But will you promise you’ll try to dream with us just a little, just this one time? We truly believe the time has come where the people who you rightfully belong to - the citizens of Albania - are ready to take the power back into their hands to tell your common story, not the one a selected few imposed on you. It is thus with great honour that we propose to you the following interventions to protect your cultural, financial and historical value to the nation in the most authentic way.

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Identity

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After strolling through the awakening city of Tirana on our fieldtrip on an early Saturday morning this past October, we finally made our way to the Grand Park, also called Parku i Madh, which you are located in yet separated from by a stone wall. Determined to learn more about you from the people who know you best, we approached one of the public gardeners in charge of maintaining the park. The gardener who introduced himself as Agon appeared undeniably excited that someone finally took interest in the building so many overlook. Indeed, having come to a halt in the middle of the park, your imposing walls were the only clue from which we might have inferred your existence from afar.

Delighted of his new task to share with us everything he knew, he commenced speaking verbosely about your and Albania's common history, filling the void of your mysterious atmosphere as he spoke. It almost seemed as if he wanted to make up for your plastic ambiguity with his precise and objective historical account. Some people still truly care

about you, we thought. Agon went on to tell us that no other than King Zog of Albania himself commissioned your construction under the name “Royal Villa” here on the outskirts of the city in 1937, only seventeen years after Tirana was declared capital of Albania (Persyn, 2020). King Zog placed three competent Italian architects and engineers, Florestano di Fausto, Giulio Bertrè and Gherardo Bosio in charge of designing the palace, each of them building on the style of their predecessor (Fshazi & Graziani, 2016). The result: an

Italian fascist-style building with a stately and quite singular concrete façade enwrapping your more opulent interiors, your inherent dissonance even present in your architecture.

But the boundaries between architecture and design, between the permanent and ephemeral, are fluid in all autocracies. Buildings are never erected for their own will, but act as an anticipation of what is to come, as a promise for much more yet to be built: and the palace was clearly built to convey King Zog’s determination to Europeanise Albania. But everything would turn out quite differently than anyone had planned. In a turn of fate that would become idiosyncratic for you, you became quite possibly the first royal palace in history to never host the royalty its red carpets were meant for: before constructions were terminated, World War II broke out and King Zog’s family fled without ever setting foot in their residence, so Agon told us. During the rest of World War II and subsequent fascist rule under Mussolini in 1939, the royal palace was inhabited by an Italian viceroy and his successor, then by the Albanian parliament once Germany took over the country in 1943. Only when the monarchist regime was substituted by a communist-ruled government after the end of World War II in 1945, the palace was renamed to Pallati i Brigadave (Palace of Brigades) and used by the Albanian government for official ceremonies and state receptions. Oddly enough, dictator Enver Hoxha did not order your premises to be demolished as many other buildings were (Falma Faszhi, 2020). Your new name, in reference to the partisan brigades that fought during the war, was intended to promote the somewhat delusive image that you were now people’s property. Agon clarified to us that in reality of course the opposite was true. Paradoxically, you were now more isolated than before, fenced off and access to your amenities reserved to a decreasing few. Those who passed your premises on their walks through the Grand Park say you radiated a forbidden, dangerous atmosphere.

And you still do, we could feel that. Some believe you were used for political incriminations at the time, Agon said, and as to give the claim more credibility, named Albanian history

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expert Valter Gjoni as a proponent (Falma Faszhi, 2020).

Well, in any case, the vanishings of political opponents from your premises leave relatively little room for interpretation.

In further research we would later learn that in tandem to these dramatic political changes the city transformed drastically in spatial terms as well. Once home to merely 50,000 inhabitants in 1944, Tirana grew to its current size of nearly one million not least because of the focal effort of socialist city planners at the time who enabled such de-

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velopments. In this context, an anecdote we would hear several times comes to mind. Mussolini’s brother-in-law, sent to report on the newly acquired territory allegedly noted markedly irritated in his communiqué from Tirana that this “must be the first time I see a boulevard without a city”. And really, there wasn’t much else in Tirana apart from the central boulevard and monumental square. To make up for this deficiency, numerous self-contained residential micro-districts were ambitiously implanted around the existing boulevard as part of the first socialist regulatory plan for Tirana. Being implemented from 1957 onwards the plan took much inspiration from Corbusier’s idea of functionalism (Pojani, 2010, p. 3). To develop a pattern of planned urbanisation that reflected a classless society, politicians worked side by side with city planners, eptiomizing the hegemony of the state and the pervasiveness of politics in every aspect of life at the time further (Endyi, 1996).

But back to you: After the fall of the communist regime in 1992 (Britannica, 2020) you were renamed Presidential Palace but people still prefer to call you with your old name today. While your building and the surrounding park were declared as “historical collection” and “high level care area” in a decision by the Council of Ministers in 2004 and subsequently opened to the public by the Municipality of Tirana in January 2010, the implementation has proven difficult. In a tone that did not hide his amusement about the matter, Agon states that this legal uncertainty was caused by Leka Zogu, son of King Zog, who, despite spending most of his life in exile from his home country, proclaimed himself Crown Prince and pretender to the throne upon his return. Even after the country’s transition to democracy he saw it fit to question the legality of the court decision, claiming to be the rightful owner of the palace. Since he died only a year after (NZZ, 2011), it was ruled by the Supreme Court of Albania in 2013 that the palace would instead become the main official residence of the Royal Court of Albania. However, this does not seem to be the only tension about your premises.

Dissonance appears to be your latent quality.

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Seemingly unsettled by the thought of the day’s work still ahead, Agon apologetically bid us goodbye, stressing how grateful he was that people took on the problems you face in a pragmatic manner. Before he eagerly hurried off he recommended us to look into another aspect that could explain your vague and unchanged position: your Italian architecture. Trying to understand what he meant, we found out through Milena Dragićević, UNESCO Chair of Multiculturalism, that the issue he alluded to is framed as dissonant heritage in academic discourse, the latter referring to the occurrence of different groups attributing different stories to a certain building.

In case of the palace it appears that for some citizens, the Italian architecture renders the palace unworthy of the representation of Albanian values, causing even others to ask for its demolition. While this is certainly one reason for the destruction of buildings in Tirana, a much more common cause for it is of less nationalistic and more general, political character. Under the progressive city governance of the past two decades, the city centre has seen a general influx of architectural replacements and additions by foreign architects under the claim of creating a new identity - even though some governments had promised zero construction in their campaigns. Together with the sometimes questionable replacements of historical monuments (old stadium, theatre, pyramid) with seemingly unfitting, futuristic constructions has left citizens rightfully sceptical about the true motivations behind those changes.

The former political prisoner Fatos Lubjona, whom we spoke to about the topic as well, deems such developments to be more the result of political motivations, individual megalomania, desire for self-realization and corruption. He explains his idea with the concept of the “failed book of Albanian architecture”. Lubjona believes that, where other cities’ architectural history is created page by page, chapter by chapter, century by century allowing historical periods and styles to meet, Tirana is forever stuck in the first chapter as politicians keep going back to the beginning,

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trying to rewrite it with their own ideas (Lubonja, 2020).

Whatever the nature of the transformation, constructive or destructive, is less of his concern - what matters is the over-

Fig. 15

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all effect on Tirana’s identity. According to Lubjona, redefining the identity of Albania ought not to be about constantly writing an entirely new book, but about adding new chapters.

Since present developments in the city still seem to erase instead of add, we remained determined to do the contrary with you (Lubjona, 2020). Nonetheless we agreed that we should clarify the specifics of your legal position beyond political sentiments with someone experienced with the system. We were able to clarify the matter in a call with Joni Baboci, Head of Urban Planning for the Municipality of Tirana.

Baboci confirmed with us that you are official, legal government property and managed by the Department of State Service who also take care of several other buildings with similar use typology. This implies that your premises are ultimately owned and managed by the central government and decisions in regards to your future made by the Prime Minister and approved by the Council of Ministers. Importantly, he also revealed that once classified, the regulations regarding the preservation of heritage that apply to you remain in force. We can’t help but think that your unchanged position over all those years suddenly seems no longer that surprising given these mounts of bureaucracy…

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City

Pondering your isolation despite your theoretical accessibility together that morning in the park, all of us agreed that it is intriguing how your poorly frequented premises remain almost symbolically separated by a stone wall from the well-visited park surrounding you. Even the locals we halted for a quick chat admitted to have never visited you and excused their lack of visit with the fact that your official entrance at the highway implies a significant detour for anyone wishing to visit you from the Grand Park.

Others named the inexistent public transportation to your premises and your infrastructural disconnection to other emerging focal centres, like the neighbouring university area, as justification. In a subsequent call we had back in our studio in Zurich with Deputy Mayor Arbjan Mazniku, he estimated that 95% of the population have never visited you despite living in Tirana all their lives. No need to worry, however, as we took on this problem to make you more accessible. We now believe that the first transformation that must precede all others is your reconnection with the city. We want to place you back on the map, so to speak. We believe that doing so will act as a provocation and mark a critical pioneering step for many more to follow.

But we had yet to answer where you should be connected to. Comparing our own experiences of the city and the park with the history Agon shared with us earlier made us realize that the context in which you are located in today is quite different to the one that you were built for.

Over the past twenty years, Tirana grew steadily to almost ten times its size. An entirely new Tirana has emerged around you as a result, a more informal, more democratic, more pluralistic one. More importantly, one without royalty. We therefore believe that it is time that you are considerately connected to your present environment.

To enact this, we carefully studied you in context of both the city and the agglomeration, the established and the emergent, the formal and the informal, the pulsating and the quiet, the atmospheric and the articulate.

We wanted to understand all relevant scales, all directions

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to connect you optimally to the potential that is already there.

After a morning spent exploring the rest of your surrounding amenities, we identified three particular situations on different scales that make it difficult to access you: The Grand Park, your seclusion from it by means of your stone wall, as well as your inopportune official northern highway entrance.

The interventions we propose to address these range in loudness, durability and outreach in order to re-enact the multiple layers of the city. Starting with the scale of the Parku i Madh, we noticed that the park is well accessible from some parts, while from others, it too, is very isolated from the city.

Big streets which are only accessible by car border it on the southern side. Thus, one way to render you more accessible would be by improving accessibility to the Parku i Madh itself, turning the area around the southern part into a designated public space for pedestrians and enabling a new entrance possibility. This would be a particularly welcome intervention as many citizens expressed their general discontent not only about the decreasing availability of public spaces but also that of pedestrian areas across the city. Because concurrently with Tirana’s liberalization and development, for one reason or another, both disappeared continuously to the point where fairly little remains. Even so, we must admit that the political argumentations around these developments are difficult to evaluate objectively from afar. What is clear, however, is that you and the Grand Park take on an important role through your embodiment of public space and the latency contained within you for more. Your preservation, and in the case of the proposition of a new pedestrian area – re-appropriation – is crucial for the preservation of the notion of collective public space at the full service of democratic citizenship.

Once this border is removed, we can move on to the borders of your palace. On our visit we watched joggers, families and lovers pass your stone wall in the Grand Park one after the other, without paying you any more tribute than a passive glance. As it is impossible to meet you by chance, we want to enable a situation in which potential visitors can access you more spontaneously, coincidentally.

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For this we propose to open a rather obvious, direct bottleneck entrance at your stone wall at an intersection of paths in the Grand Park *Figure 18. This would result in technically two main entries to your premises, with the official one being at the Rruga e Elbasanit, the highway that separates you from the eastern neighbourhood. At this entrance we propose to add a bridge traversing the highway *Figure 16 to enable

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inhabitants of the opposing agglomerations to access you more easily. Additionally, reconnecting the palace with the agglomeration will also reinforce our overall ambition to lift you from your elitist narrative. Enabling the dialogue between all parts of the city will lay the foundations for your more diverse and open trajectory. We are convinced that overall, these three interventions are important in reconceptualising the palace as an interconnected environment that will enable a whole range of other processes and usage typologies.

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Deconstructing Beauty

After we found your official entrance from the highway front and entered your gates despite some minor tribulations on our way, we spent quite some time wandering your beautiful garden as mid-day neared. Your garden now seemed incredibly quiet and desolate to us compared to the surrounding park. Apart from the mystical Italian statutes dispersed in the garden we did not encounter a single soul on our walk. When we approached your building to round off our visit with a tour of it, we were surprised to learn from the guarding staff that only your garden is accessible to visitors exclusively on weekends. In fact, we were informed that the building itself remains locked at all times, meaning that the lavish rooms and art remain hidden from the public. Being declined entry to the palace we decided to opt for a deductive approach instead, hoping to find inspiration for possible interventions from conversations with the staff. Despite admitting that the majority of rooms are in dire need of repair, they still made it clear that they wish to leave you as you are. Instead of opening you to the public they prefer to cater to a paying and exclusive few who rent your building on occasion. From a brief account of the contents of each of your floors the staff gave us, we truly could not see a reason for keeping you away from the public any longer with all the possibilities contained in your structure.

Since even the staff had to admit that your building has severe technical shortcomings we felt confirmed in our belief that renovation and repurposing will become imperative eventually and discussions that circle around the hypothetical futile.

Deciding to approach the topic of your transformation from a more pragmatic perspective we enquired about the specifics of your financial position since we believe that economic reasoning may provide the basis for a more factual argumentation of possible interventions. With the remark that the former is kept secret, the staff politely declined our request.

They were at least courteous enough to reveal that security and maintenance currently account for the largest expenses, although the secrecy about your finances surprised us given the fact that you are state-owned property.

Thinking about all of the information we had gathered on our visit back in our studio in Zurich, we came up with the idea of a compromise. More specifically, a compromise in form of an elaborate plan which will transform your premises into a sophisticated museum that respects your history while incorporating the contemporary. Because after rendering your premises more accessible by making you visible, we deem it necessary to open you up further. If implemented well, we believe that your past might be used as a powerful juxtaposition to highlight the progress made since. Staying true to our participatory design process, several citizens and experts were asked through Instagram polls and chats about the ideal usages of the palace they would desire. In introductory questions, 87% indicated that Tirana is missing museums and art spaces, 95% agreed that the same is true for public spaces and libraries.

Through more specific questions which asked users for their preferred usage depending on the floor plans presented to them, the following proposal resulted. Throughout the whole building some rooms will be left as they are; showcasing the art already present, while using others for contemporary art. Even other rooms shall be adopted for more modern uses. By creating a predetermined path that guides users through the palace upon their visit, it is also possible to thoughtfully curate the history of the palace in the process *Figure 21 and 23. The curated walk will lead through the antechambers, provide glances at decaying rooms, then lead up to co-working spaces, art labs on the first floor and the top floor wintergarden. Speaking to hostel owner and architect Sonila Abdalli highlighted the incredible necessity of such an addition to the cultural program of Tirana (Abdalli, personal documentation, 2020) once more as there are currently very few museums or galleries worth a visit. In fact, there’s only one gallery that currently mixes the contemporary with the old. In a city which is currently doing seemingly everything to hide its own identity and beauty, wouldn’t it beautiful to have one space reserved to show it, to deconstruct it?

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Ground Floor Salon

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Ground Floor Curated Path

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A Conversation and social backgrounds, it might become a true symbol of participation by igniting conversation between opposing minds. In fact, when asked about Tirana’s identity, the response of citizens turned out to be “coffeeshop” almost in unison. In favour of a coffeeshop is also a more recent development in which Tirana citizens are seen to eagerly venture to slightly more distant coffeehouses on the outskirts of the city, for want of larger gardens and traditional food (Falma

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As of right now you must think this is all very well, but you must miss the settings that enable conversations; the discussions, the arguments that your people are at once annoyed by and yet so proud of. Once we were back in the studio after our informative fieldtrip, we were able to structure and consolidate all of the information. Having determined all the elementary processes that need to take place to enable further ones, we thought that the next inter-

vention for your holistic transformation ought to be one which generates a dialogue between you, the city and its inhabitans.

We believe that to start a conversation is also the first step towards a critical analysis of reality, towards questioning it and imagining an alternative one. To enact these ambitions, we envision different workshops taking place throughout your garden. Various workshops on a number of topics will generate the necessary momentum to ultimately construct the communal, gradual construction of a coffeeshop addition to the museum. Due to its omnipresence in the city and its popularity as a place of exchange, the coffeeshop stands for similarities and common ground. Frequented by all age groups

Faszhi, 2020). The addition of a coffeeshop that could act as a forerunner to constructive initiatives extending vertically in the future is further justified by its economic self-sufficiency. If revenue were generated, this could finance further initiatives beyond and around the ground floor coffeeshop, therefore respecting both the demands of tax payers and the progressive development of the new palace with its context. Some of the building-related renovation costs incurred could be financed through this self-financing scheme too. In short, we see only reasons for the implementation of workshops and the addition of a coffeeshop which would both contribute to bring a lively, convivial atmosphere to you.

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We would often think of our conversation with Deputy Mayor Arbjan Mazniku who stressed the importance of economic reasoning in today’s Albania repeatedly.

Indeed, great ideas for your transformation alone are in themselves insufficient, they must also be self-sustaining.

In other words, any spatial transformations which hope for success must, as a consequence, render your premises economically sustainable. We believe that the best projects of transformations are not those who simply transform your building, but those which make it useful and perpetuate its functionality. Any interventions should, ideally, also create revenue in order to be justifiable to tax payers, Mazniku reminded us. At least to our eyes it is clear that this in turn also supports our observation that the maintenance of your isolation and decay is insupportable from an economic per-

spective. Additionally, you presently generate close to no economic value with the few sporadic conference bookings that complete your tranquil schedule. Don’t you agree that this is in itself unsustainable and hardly justifiable to tax payers? Moreso, we believe that any one-time investment that would render you fully connected, functional, safe and entertaining will fall short of the continuous repair costs that you will incur over time. Your accessibility, together with a cultural and leisurely offering create the necessary preconditions for perpetuating your essence way beyond your stone walls *Figure 28. In this regard, we can only hope that those responsible for you will soon realize that your comprehensive well-being would also produce reciprocal value for the city as a whole and support the enactment of Tirana as a remarkable cultural site for citizens and visiting foreigners alike.

Visionary

HSG

e

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Successful Paradox

We are writing to you now several weeks after we could thoughtfully incorporate all aspects that we deemed relevant into our proposals through our interaction with your context. We believe that connecting different interventions is the most powerful way to enact your potential. In its absolute abstraction, you may have noticed that we created a plan of transformation that connects your premises to future visitors by both symbolic and infrastructural means, respects your heritage and creates scalable economic value which would represent the largest common denominator of all people who expressed wanting to visit you. Yours shall be the story of many, not a few and we have no doubt that you are fully equipped to embrace an entirely new, egalitarian, welcoming identity. Not least because your previous elitist orientation has proven to render you more desolate than powerful. We not only want to put Pallatti i Brigadave on the map of tourists curious to explore the city but equally much on the mind of your own people who wish to rediscover the city’s identity. Yes, you may have a few indisputable weaknesses, but we believe that these are ultimately outweighed by your beauty and the plentiful opportunities surrounding you. We are convinced that our interconnected propositions have the potential to transform you into this successful paradox. So now that you heard our proposals, what do you think? Wouldn’t it be great if people could reach you more easily, admire your beauty, relax in your garden and exchange conversations about you? Tell us, did you dream with us? Just a little?

In any case, we will be eagerly awaiting your response...

Yours sincerely, Your friends and advocates

Visionary

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Reality

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Reality

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Reality

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Evaluations

In evaluating the possibility for a transformation of the palace, one must position the post‑socialist experience of spatial transformations in the framework of the overall institutional change on the one hand, and in the context of rapid economic and political system change on the other (Tsenkova, 2014, p. 23). On a meta-level, systemic inertia need to be taken seriously. Present-day city development in Tirana is characterized by the opposition of two main actors: Civil society organisations on the one side and state or local government employees on the other. These main actors often act according to diverging, occasionally converging, agendas of the future of Tirana city and are known to hold different beliefs on the optimal concepts and methods employed to get there (Abitz, 2006, p. 7; Baboci, personal documentation, 2020). In an unconscious testament of the inefficient end result of this continuous mutual obstruction, both parties complain about the inertia that marks change of all forms in Albania, to which the inherently burdensome bureaucratic process only adds.

The same polarization that can be observed on a political level also characterizes the discussions around public space amongst the population. Hopefully not taking away all too much from Deputy Mayor Arbjan Mazniku wish to once theorize about Albania’s tedious path towards the conceptualization of public space from toilet to square himself, he elucidated the foundations of the problematic in a wonderful anecdote. When the citizens were finally freed from the tyranny of the same after the fall of communism, people first immediately turned to repair and improve their toilet, followed by their bedroom and only later, the living rooms of their homes according to his observation, he said.

If this account were true, it exemplifies that the reconstruction of the country commenced from Albanians’ most private areas onto shared spaces, at a pace where it took two more decades to negotiate the space between two neighbour’s doors in a coordinated manner. It is thus only recently that Albanians could turn their full attention to the common space between the buildings – public space. It is also understand-

able then, that the common points of references on how to best conceptualize it still have to be negotiated and that the government in the meantime fills this void created by conflict with its own impositions. In trying to structure and open the discussion we must therefore aim to identify what unites rather than what separates people, particularly as outsiders.

Another legacy of the socialist era to be considered is the general distrust of the public in the proper workings of the system and particularly, any just implementation of top-down organized change. After all, against the backdrop of many projects of international starchitects that have already been implemented or which are in planning, Skanderbeg square and Stefano Boeri’s Tirana 30 masterplan, the rather punctured intervention of a palace seems to face, in comparison, relatively few obstacles. Pragmatically paraphrasing Boeri’s words of grand ambitions for his plan that will completely redefine the city of Tirana by 2030, the main goals of said plan are the tripling of the current green area and the elevation of maintaining already scarce public space to an absolute priority (Boeri, 2019).

In regards to the palace’s ecosystem itself, it is intriguing that discussions on how to seize the palace’s full potential have been taking place for over six years with no decisions made. One reason for this might be, as some of the experts consulted pointed out, that those in charge of the palace still wish to maintain the power relationship of the past. Along this logic, marginal concessions of ownership like opening the garden to the public leaves people in the false belief to have a say, when in reality they still own nothing. It then seems unavoidably conspicuous that access to the palace is almost intentionally aggravated with fenced gates and locked doors, keeping the public as eternal visitors at mercy of the gatekeepers. Unfortunately, in its literal sense.

Reality

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Creating Legitimacy

Nonetheless, factually observing developments and paying close attention to the accounts of locals, I believe that change for the palace and Tirana as a whole is coming. But even if the transformation of a redefined palace seems imminent out of sheer necessity, the question of how to create genuine and long-lasting legitimacy for change must yet be answered. For one, the ETH students achieved this through an unparalleled participatory process in which contrasting beliefs were gathered from Instagram polls, interviews and zoom meetings with local experts and muses, which were then analysed, evaluated and integrated. Recognizing that the Albanian context exhibits certain particularities, we were well advised to look towards the methods precursors of spatial transformation in this location and context like 51N4E took. As Freek Persyn noted on their process of reconceptualising Tirana’s cultural-political centre Skanderbeg square “designing in such a space laden with history and aspirations is to reframe and reveal” (Persyn, 2019). Mutually developing the framework conditions that respect the plurality of our existence proved central to 51N4E’s practice. And for the design process of the students it too remained important to create a common space that permits a multiplicity of situations and actions at the palace.

While citizens warned us that any spatial intervention in Tirana is expected to face resistance, the students tried to mitigate this risk by fulfilling the non-negotiable requirement of economic legitimacy that underlay all of their projects and enacting the consensus found amongst all those interviewed. Personally, I see further potential in achieving legitimacy in integrating, respectively subordinating, the specific interventions to the palace to the much broader masterplan of Tirana 2030 by the starchitect Stefano Boeri, for the sole reason of taking advantage of an already established trajectory to the future. If the palace were transformed into a cultural centre, its garden revitalized and integrational infrastructure provided after all, it could serve as an empowering example of the enormous potential contained in the city of Tirana.

In a final remark I would like to point out that as individuals who could not visit the mystical palace in person as a result of Covid-19, together with a lack of in-depth understanding of Albania of the kind that is unattainable for any place that is not one’s home, all of our proposals and considerations should be understood in a suggestive, not normative manner. Additionally, due to reasons of stringency and resources some valuable student's proposals and expert commentaries were omitted. I further deem it noteworthy how many locals encouraged us to proceed with our work and expressed their appreciation for our interest in the Albanian context and confirmed that contributions from the outside are indeed valued and welcomed. I believe that the efforts to achieve participatory legitimacy by documenting the different positions encountered in a strategic manner may also provide a valuable basis on how to structure future projects of spatial transformations.

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References

Number

References

01

Alkemade et al., (2020). REWRITING ARCHITECTURE: 10+1 actions for an adapive architecture. Place of publication not identified: ARTBOOK DAP.

02

Abdalli, S. (2020). Personal documentation, HSG, St. Gallen Menditisit omniscitatet lia et quoIgnimaxi maximolupti tem

03

Baboci, J. (2020). Architectural Design V-IX: Pallati i Brigadave. Tirana.

[Design Studio]. Chair of Architecture & Transformation, ETH, Zurich

04

Boeri, S. (2019, July 26). Tirana 2030. Retrieved November 19, 2020, from https:/www.stefanoboeriarchitetti.net/en/project/tirana-030-2/

05

Britannica. (2020). Collapse of communism. Retrieved November 19, 2020, from https://www.britannica.com/place/Albania/Collapse-of-communism

06

European Commission (2020). European Neighbourhood Policy And Enlargement Negotiations. Albania Report 2020. Retrieved 2020, from https://ec.europa.eu/ neighbourhood-enlargement/sites/near/files/albania_report_2020.pdf.

07

Enyedi, G. (1996). Urbanisation under socialism. In Cities After Socialism (eds G. Andrusz, M. Harloe and I. Szelenyi). https://doiorg/10.1002/9780470712733.ch4

08

Fshazi, F., & Graziani, S. (2016). How things meet. Gent: APE.e

09

Forum of Slavic Cultures. (2018). Dissonant Heritage. Retrieved November 19, 2020, from https://dissonantheritage.wordpress.com/

10

Kornberger, M. (2012). Governing the City: From Planning to Urban Strategy.

Retrieved November 18, 2020, from https://journals.sagepub.com doi/10.1177/0263276411426158

11

Lubonja, F. (2020). Architectural Design V-IX: Pallati i Brigadave. Tirana.

[Design Studio]. Chair of Architecture & Transformation, ETH, Zurich

12

Mazniku, A. (2020). Architectural Design V-IX: Pallati i Brigadave. Tirana.

[Design Studio]. Chair of Architecture & Transformation, ETH, Zurich

13

Persyn, F. (2019, June 04). 51N4E. Framework for Participation: Skanderbeg Square in Tirana. Retrieved November 19, 2020, from https://www.toposmagazine.com/skanderbeg-square-tirana/

14

Persyn, F. (2020). Architectural Design V-IX: Pallati i Brigadave. Tirana.

[DesignStudio]. Chair of Architecture & Transformation, ETH, Zurich

15

Pojani, D. (2010). Tirana: City Profile (doctoral dissertation). Delft University doi:10.1016/j.cities.2010.02.002

16

Tsenkova, S. (2014). Beyond transitions: Understanding urban change in postsocialist cities. Retrieved November 19, 2020, from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/226557359_Beyond_transitions_ Understanding_urban_change_in_post-socialist_cities

17

Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

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Index of Images

Number

Page

Creators and Contributors

Fig. 1

19

Tami Notsani Photography of Palace

Fig. 2

21

Tami Notsani Photography of Palace

Fig. 3

21

Tami Notsani Photography of Palace

Fig. 4

23

Tami Notsani Photography of Palace

Fig. 5

25

Tami Notsani Photography of Palace

Fig. 6

27

Tami Notsani Photography of Palace

Fig. 7

30

Tami Notsani Photography of Palace

Fig. 8

31

Tami Notsani Photography of Palace

Fig. 9

34

Tami Notsani Photography of Palace

Fig. 10

35

Tami Notsani Photography of Palace

Fig. 11

35

Tami Notsani Photography of Palace

Fig. 12

38

Tami Notsani Photography of Palace

Fig. 13

43

Arkivi Qendror Teknik i Ndertimit - AQTN Drawing of Palace (copyright granted)

Fig. 14

44

Restauro Valeri Inc. Mapping of degradations

Fig. 15

45

Restauro Valeri Inc. Mapping of degradations

Fig. 16

46

Restauro Valeri Inc. Mapping of degradations

Fig. 17

47

Isolation Group Cut out of location of Palace

Fig. 18

48

Isolation Group Bridge traversing highway

Fig. 19

49

Isolation Group Creating an additional entrance from stone wall

Fig. 20

50

Isolation Group Atmospheric mapping for impression

Fig. 21

50

Deconstructing Beauty Group Red Wire to mark the red path which guides future visitors

Fig. 22

50

Deconstructing Beauty Group Guided Path leading through new and old

Fig. 23

50

Deconstructing Beauty Group A suggestion for a new floor plan

Fig. 24

51

Deconstructing Beauty Group A suggestion for a new floor plan

Fig. 25

51

Conversation Group Example of a workshop in the garden

Fig. 26

54

Deconstructing Beauty Group A suggestion for a new floor plan

Fig. 27

54

Deconstructing Beauty Group A suggestion for a new floor plan

Fig. 28

54

Conversation Group Example of a workshop in the garden

64

Author

Noemi Iten

Graphic Design

Nicola Peter nicolapeter.ch

Isolation

Insa Streit Marlene Metzler Ikonija Stanimirovic

Deconstructing Beauty

Colin MĂźller Anna Badia Alanis Diem

A Conversation

Simona Luggen Ivana Lazarova

Printing

TBD

Paper

TBD

Typeface

Diatype ABC Dinamo

work as little as possible

Freddi Fischli Niels Olsen