Forum A+P 08

68
STATEMENT
A necessary preamble to the description of the project for the
reconversion of the Tirana’s International Cultural Center into
the National Theatre and Visual Arts Center regards the
actual historical phase that is living the capital of Albania.
Tirana is today a city with 1 million of inhabitants, still destined
to grow and to assume the role of city-state: nowadays
Albania identify itself with its capital, a city that is seriously
working for the construction of a future of a modern and
European city. The question of the adaptation to the new
goals refers a more general question that concerns the policy
of the cities and their way to use the architecture into that
countries that are overlooking on the scenario of a new
development. These aspects represent opportunities and
threats, at the same time: the development that very probably
will involve the cities in the next years, will require very
important interventions and, as consequence, could occur a
loose of the typical urban characters of the city, as occurs in
several countries characterized by a strong economic
evolution. For delete this risks is necessary work just on the
history and tradition: is the culture that must assume a central
role in the development of Tirana and Albania. Albania, as
frequently happen or is happened in other countries after
important political changes, risks that the will of break with
the past transforms itself in a loose of identity. The occasion
of the concourse for the “Pyramid” building is therefore
strategic because of this building, in the recent time, has
represented important moments for the Albanian history and
must continues to do it in the future. For the architects is
always a theme of great interest work on a existent building
that imposes a comparison with a work realized by others.
Sometimes, as it could be happen in this case, the question
is if it is more convenient, also from an economic point of
view, pull down and re-built a building that, maybe, is not
susceptible of exchange into use destination or not presents
particular aesthetics features. But in the case of the “Pyramid”
is necessary underline that a city recognizes itself into some
its buildings not ever and not only for their intrinsic beauty or
architectonical value but for a set of reasons, often
impenetrable. The “Pyramid” must be seen with wide
attention for its symbolic meaning: a big eagle – eagle of
Albanese lag – rested on the Tirana’s land. Also inside many
elements remind to the Albanese symbols, as the ive point
star on the covering of the great central space, also it an
historical symbol of the national lag, even if no more present.
Therefore, the “Pyramid” is certainly one of the building in
which the city recognize itself but, from a strictly
architectonical point of view, it must be admitted that the
internal organization make so dificult its transformation. We
are, in fact, at the presence of a structure very connoted in its
morphology and very conditioning for its symbolic values, as
before enunciated. So the theme proposed by the concourse
is a great challenge that we have intended to catch, don’t
forgetting that a public architecture, really modern deinable,
must responds to requisites of representativeness but also of
functionality, well deined. In this case the request is to
reconvert the existent building into a great National Theatre
and Visual Arts Center and, therefore, with the attention on all
the questions and the aspects connected with the better
functioning of a structure that holds functions of superior
level. The central idea of the project has been to work on the
theme of the “shape into the shape” or “the building into the
building” going to deine a igure geometrically and
morphological settled – a sphere – inside another with similar
features, as the pyramid. In practice, it was decided to realize
a “theatrical sphere” inside the pyramid: a sphere that is
possible to see from the outside and is possible to read in its
geometric pureness on the inside, nearly to represent the
modern Albania that is from its history and tradition. In that
way the new theatrical function takes places inside the
symbol and became itself symbol. The high symbolic value of
this project idea is conirmed by the eminent references
assumed: the visionary architectures of Claude Nicolas
Ledoux and Etienne Louis Boullé, respectively for the
cemetery of Chaux and for the cenotaph dedicated to Isaac
Newton, that thinks about the theme of eternities and
harmony between the universe and the things. Also the
Pantheon in Rome, that conserves in its etymology the
reference to the temple dedicated at “ all the gods” (56
789:;