The Pyramid of Tirana

MVRDV
/
Educational
/
Albania
Company Name
MVRDV
ARCHITECTURAL CREDITS

MVRDV
iRI Architects
JESHILE
ARUP

Project Team

Design team: Ronald Hoogeveen, Stavros Gargaretas, Guido Boeters, Angel Sanchez Navarro, Boris Tikvarski, Jasper van der Ven, Mirco Facchinelli, Manuel Magnaguagno, Leo Stuckardt, José Garcia Garcia
Strategy &Development: Willeke Vester, Daan van Gool
Visualisations: Antonio Luca Coco, Luca Piattelli, Jaroslaw Jeda, Luana La Martina, Gianlorenzo Petrini
Co-architect: iRI Architects
Landscape architect: iRI, JESHILE, MVRDV
Structural engineer: ARUP, Gentian Lipe, Luan Murtaj
MEP: ARUP, iRI, Nikolin Risilia, Artur Dado, Isuf Kore
Monuments expert: Daniel Gjoni

CLIENT/OWNER NAME:
Albanian-American Development Foundation (AADF)
Project Name:
The Pyramid of Tirana
Company Country:
Albania
Project Country:
Albania
Project City:
Tirana
Project Category:
Educational
Project Area:
11835 m²
Completion Date:
20231016
Project overview
The work of MVRDV’s design team encompasses and encircles the existing structure, using the structure as a blueprint to which publicly accessible spaces and boxes for education and events were added. A stack of coloured boxes containing rooms for education and events are scattered in and around the structure and the park. These colourful additions are also found on top of the structure, and in the park at the front of the building, giving the surroundings the atmosphere of a festival and even a “squatted” area.Around half of these spaces will house non-profit educational institution TUMO Tirana, which provides free afterschool education for 12- to 18-year-olds in new techniques such as software, robotics, animation, music, and film. Founded in Armenia in 2011 and since then spreading throughout Europe, TUMO helps to provide education and opportunities that can be a tool against the “brain drain” that threatens the economy of countries like Albania. The other half of the coloured boxes will be accessible to the public, hosting rental spaces for cafés, restaurants, start-up offices and labs, incubators, studio spaces, and more.
Project history
The Pyramid of Tirana, originally built as a museum dedicated to the communist dictator Enver Hoxha, has been dramatically transformed into a new kind of cultural hub. Reusing the concrete structure, the Pyramid is now an open sculpture in a new park. The park and the sculpture are home to an ensemble of colourful boxes, scattered in and around the original building that house cafés, studios, workshops, start-up offices, incubators, festivals, and classrooms where Albanian youth will learn various technology subjects for free. Steps have been added to the building’s sloping façades, allowing the people of Albania to literally walk all over the showpiece of the former dictator.First opened as a museum in 1988, the Pyramid of Tirana has led numerous lives. Since the fall of the communist regime, the building was variously used as a radio station, a nightclub, a conference venue, a broadcast centre and, during the 1999 Kosovo War, a base for NATO. The ever-changing uses, along with incomplete previous renovation plans, left behind a patchwork of alterations that made the interior cluttered and dark. In recent decades, the question of what to do with the building proved highly controversial. A study published in 2015, however, showed that the majority of Albanians were opposed to demolishing the building, and in 2017 this desire was honoured when the government announced plans to transform the concrete monolith. This promise was carried out with the help of the Albanian-American Development Foundation (AADF) and the Municipality of Tirana, with the decision made to turn the building into a nurturing environment for young Albanians.The transformation of the Pyramid shows how a building can be made suitable for a new era, while at the same time preserving its complex history, and demonstrates that historic brutalist buildings are ideal for reuse. The project also meets a number of the Sustainable Development Goals outlined by the United Nations. Rather than wastefully demolish the structure, its robust concrete shell is adapted along circular economy principles. As the majority of the structure is open to the surroundings for most of the year, only the added boxes housing the educational program need to be climate-controlled, reducing energy consumption. Social sustainability is advanced in the building’s new use, with the educational programme advancing education and preparing the next generation for success.