By: Lorin Kadiu

This week I read a book that many citizens don't know exists. A heavy 800-page publication, where someone wrote on the back cover, in the Prime Minister's handwriting, "... by a Flamingo killer."

June 3. The “Bread&Heart” festival opens its second edition this evening. The agenda starts at 18:00 PM, with an exhibition at the Center for Openness and Dialogue (COD), the gallery that Rama has created inside the prime minister’s office, with taxpayer money, designed by 51N4E, one of the 60 studios that we will delve into further. The performance begins, on a stage that the performers have built for themselves.

At 19:00 PM, the guests, mostly foreign architects, will go to the Red Villa. The program promises “Albanian hospitality” and the presentation of the book “The Albanian Files”, edited by Anneke Abhelakh. The book contains a chapter on each of the 60 international architecture studios working in Albania.

At the same time, with the red walls of the villa in the background, Prime Minister Rama is giving an interview to CNN, where he nervously answers the journalist's questions about the resort in Nartë and the massive protests that have started four days ago. "There is no project," he says in a threatening tone, "it is fake news, Albania is under a hybrid attack by those who do not want to see what is really happening here." There he begins to show what is really happening behind his back. "Hundreds of the best architects in the world are here today, for this book, thick like this, full of projects of a new Albania that many do not want to see happening."

In an emotional outburst, as an attempt to justify and relativize what is planned in Narta, he showed us for the first time, something bigger than Narta. His vision for Albania...

June 9. The tenth day of protests. After watching the Prime Minister’s interview on CNN, I met with a group of European journalists who were visiting Albania. I asked them, half-jokingly, if any of them could pester the Prime Minister about the red book, and I told them that I think Albanians have a right to read it too. One of them, Irish journalist Flor Mac Carthy, asked him this question directly a few hours later. The exchange between them is available as a “livestream” on the Prime Minister’s website, filmed and edited by his PR team. He says he doesn’t know what exactly is happening with the distribution and that he doesn’t have a copy for all the journalists present. After asking her why she thinks she deserves to have this book now, he decides to give her a copy.

In a show for the cameras, he signed: "To my Irish flower, from a Flamingo murderer," adding that he hoped her husband would not misunderstand. Later, Flor Mac Carthy told me that the whole situation felt strange, but gave me the book, adding that she did it for Albanian journalists, because she thinks they should know what's inside.

This is not just the story of a strange June afternoon. It is also indicative of the mechanism, a country governed as a performance staged for an audience that is usually foreign.

The same mechanism, on a larger scale, is found in the book, and to see it clearly we must analyze it, place it in front of what is being built, ask who pays, who owns it, and where the money comes from (the recent investigations by SPAK are particularly helpful for the latter).

Albanian files

The book shows how the recruitment of architects and studios that are transforming the country passes into very few hands. Belgian architect Xaveer De Geyter, of the XDGA studio, writes in the chapter reserved for his studio that in 2004, in the cafe of the Berlage University in Rotterdam, a “tall person” enters who introduces himself as the mayor of Tirana. Two decades and 29 projects later, De Geyter’s firm continues to design for Tirana and Vlora. A 300,000m2 marina for the BALFIN Group with a Marriott hotel, casino and residences that extend along the same line where years earlier, the same studio had designed the Vlora promenade.

The Milanese studio Baukuh describes similar meetings, in one of the most interesting passages of the book. One of their architects, Pier Polo Tamburelli, also a student at Berlage University, writes how he met the mayor with a group of students, who he remembers entertaining with jokes “about Venetian merchants who dared to refuse Albanian hospitality”. A few months later he asks him directly: “Do you want to build in Tirana?”..

Years later, in August 2013 (when Rama became Prime Minister), the same architects recall how Rama gathered them to discuss “the future of his mandate,” on a walk on the beach of Durrës, accompanied by a group of socialists in bathing suits. Bukuh recalls that opposition newspapers wrote at the time that Rama had given the entire coast to his foreign friends.

The story repeats itself in other chapters where the Architects, in their own words, do not describe themselves as employed, but chosen to develop projects in Albania.

Let's start from the beginning. Rama's preface opens with the word "dosje", which he draws its meaning from communist surveillance files, according to him they are files written about people without asking them. "Instruments of fear", he calls them, while for his files, he says they are the opposite.

A few pages later, editor Anneke Abhelakh does the same trick, with a different word. She builds her introduction around the word “comrade,” which she connects to the word “room,” as a shared space. To put it simply, these two passages try to tell us about a place where architects, developers, and the state coexist like a happy family.

But Abhelakh openly says that she cannot separate architecture from power. She describes the developer simply: “investor, initiator, negotiator, sometimes speculator”. And she shows how the book itself was built: 60 studios each filled out their own questionnaire, with a field where they had to put the developer (or client). But each studio decided for itself whether to fill in that field or not.

This explains the figures and background we will read now.

The database I built to write this article uses as a source 60 technical tables with 523 projects posted by studios, the data has been cross-referenced with dozens of Citizens.al articles in the "Vertical Tirana" column, which attempts to explain construction in the capital.

From “The Albanian Files”, so far 57 projects have been built, 53 are under construction, 47 are awaiting permits, while the fate of many others is unknown. Millions of square meters of construction, in Tirana and the most coveted areas of the coast, from north to south. In 41% of the projects, the client is not mentioned at all, this is also because seven of the studios have chosen not to indicate the developers in any of their projects.

Among them is Bolles+Wilson, the second largest studio in the book with 36 projects, where in no case is the developer identified. The studio admits being directly invited by the Prime Minister for the first international competition. When answering the editor’s question about how an architect should involve the public in what he builds, they state that consultation “are politically correct, but every ship needs a captain.” The studio itself admits they have not won any competitions in Albania, but they later show how the Prime Minister himself sent them investors to make the facade of the COIN tower, which had not met his aesthetic expectations.

A studio whose clients are mainly the state, has "learned from losses" and has managed to do over 30 buildings in Korça and projects with direct commissioning. In the end, it doesn't even bother to list the developers and clients, as it seems to at least have the honesty not to pretend that the public is being consulted.

This line of honesty runs throughout the book. The studios are not even asked to justify the mechanism, and most don’t even try. Spanish studio ARQUITECTURA-G even praises the permitting process as “significantly faster and less restrictive” than elsewhere, driven by “a clear vision coming from the prime minister.” Israeli firm Avner Yashar credits “the involvement and commitment of the prime minister and the government in shaping the projects that are being developed.”

Only one studio takes the candor to another level. Kuehn Malvezzi, based in Berlin and Paris, describe Rama as someone who is “curating Albania like an art exhibition” and notes that “working under a democratically elected statesman as curator produces a rare sense of blending democratic power and curatorial decision-making.”

A strange case is that of the Swiss Valerio Olgiati, present in Albania for 21 years, with 5 projects: only one built, Ardia Palace, inside Lake Park, built by Perxhola shpk. In the same place, another project, much larger, is now starting construction: Grand Park Skyline on Adem Jashari Street.

It is worth pausing here, as the history of this piece of territory near Lake Park best explains the mechanism.

The street is located where the Republic Guard was located until a few years ago, a land that Mayor Veliaj promised to return to the citizens in 2018. The project is called “Grand Park Skyline”, with three towers of 40, 51 and 71 floors. The company that is building it is called X-One, and it received the permit in July 2024, a few months before the Albanian Investment Corporation (KISH) opened negotiations for the National Library. Negotiations with KISH provided X-One with 12 pieces of public land, some of which it did not even legally own when the talks began. The guarantee of this bargain: if X-One does not build the Library and only erects the towers, it will pay only 2% of the project value.

The same area also houses the Nova Construction tower, whose owner is one of twenty people under SPAK's arrest warrant on charges of money laundering from cocaine trafficking. The third tower that closes the ensemble belongs to Artech, a company that appears behind many of the foreign architects' projects in the book.

This is just one example of how valuable public land in Tirana that was promised to be returned to citizens as a "green park, without towers," by the mayor himself, is being alienated.

This is not an isolated case. KISH is using the same formula for the Selman Stermasi Stadium, the Congress Palace, the Zyber Hallulli Orphanage, the Sports Palace, government villas in Velipojë and Vlora. Behind the projects are the same names of designers, while many projects are failing to attract investors.

Even the villa where the Prime Minister gave the interview to CNN follows a similar logic, with the state itself as the client. Villa No. 5, a property classified as a “national security asset” was rebuilt for around six million euros with three contracts awarded without open competition. The bidders did not disappoint, each asking for the maximum budget: the designer 98.5%, the builder 99% and the supervisor (who was arrested two months later by SPAK) 95%. The secrecy was justified on the basis of a procurement procedure covering tenders for defense and security matters.

The studio that was paid by the government to design the Villa has never responded to repeated requests for information from Citizens.al. On the other hand, Bofill Taller de Arquitectura, one of the book’s 60 contributors, appears, stating that it donated a concept for the villa to the Albanian government. Today, promotional materials for the Bukë e Zemër festival present the building without any hesitation as “Vila No. Red by Bofill Arquitectura.” To understand this generosity, it is enough to read how Bofill describes the meeting with their client. The studio writes that initially they thought they were going to meet a politician, “it very quickly became clear that we were actually meeting an artist,” who walks around Tirana “as if it were an open gallery.”

On the coast, the numbers are staggering.increasing

Some of the projects in the files are gigantic. A CEBRA-designed "eco-resort", still unbuilt in Durrës, covers an area of ​​1.46 million square meters, and "Livadh Resorts" in Himara covers 242,000m2. "Orikum Oasis" by XDGA studio, for LAXMI Real Estate, covers 500 thousand square meters on the south coast and continues to be listed as a project "in development". The same studio also designed the Vlora marina for BALFIN, which covers 300 thousand square meters.

The coast seems to be the territory where the mechanism becomes most violent. A 2021 environmental assessment for the Vjosa-Narta protected area identified over 1,500 hectares of land for private development within the lagoon. 600 hectares are owned by a bank, 309 by a consortium of companies that won the Vlora Airport concession, and 150 by the Adhenis company, owned by Artur Shehu, now wanted by SPAK. The same company appears in the book as the developer of two XDGA studio projects being built in Vlora (Lungomare 2 and Pier Restaurant).

For Narta and Zvërnec, "The Albanian Files" shows that plans and negotiations began years ago. The book lists two projects by Archea Associati, commissioned in 2022. “Zvërnec master plan,” with developer Kastrati Group, and “Poro Valona,” with developer Natura Resort shpk.

Even the Divjaka National Park has its own plan for this catalog from 2024. “Kingscoast development,” designed by Indian architect Anupama Kundoo for the company NIU Invest, is in the “master plan” phase to turn it into a resort with a “vision of coexistence” with the wetland.

The delta and lagoon projects don’t end there. BALFIN, the company behind the Vlora Marina, quietly commissioned a master plan from a studio that is part of the book’s happy family. 639 hectares from MVRDV for a project called UMEA. Another of their projects on the other side of the delta is the 600-hectare “New Apolonia” by global resort firm WATG, which envisions 1.52 million square meters of new construction and a population of 45,755. Asked by Citizens.al a few days ago, the company dismissed them as unrealized concepts, prepared for a real estate fair in Munich, even though it had opened 13 company NIPTs, named after the neighborhoods of the giant project itself.

SPAK's investigations are revealing the links between cocaine money and the towers of Tirana, but they also revealed a forged document from the Ottoman period that appropriates the Narta lagoon, nine seized villas in Palasa, and two other undeclared properties belonging to senior government officials.

Albania's files don't stop here. These are some of the projects that have been proposed, with the same mechanism and actors, if investigations or the loss of total power don't stand in the way.

In Gjipe, the bay that many consider the last virgin beach of the south, MVRDV has been sketching a project simply called “Gorge(ous)” since 2016, with a glass hotel over the canyon. The project has no developer, no indication of when it will be built, but it remains a name listed in the pages of the book.

Rana e Hedhun, a protected dune area in the north, was designed by Álvaro Siza in a “master plan” for the company Gruppo IDA, while a few pages later, Valerio Olgiati has sketched “towers” ​​in the same area. Still undeveloped, this tower project is located near the Kune-Vaini lagoon, which also contains the plan commissioned by BALFIN for Toyo Ito.

Most interesting is Luca Dini’s chapter. The designer himself comes from the world of yachts, and his chapter clearly shows this. The map of his projects on the Albanian coast is drawn like a yacht trip, with “comic” illustrations that accompany the reader from one bay to another. The first, the “Life Marina Complex” master plan, which includes seven kilometers of virgin coastline near Saranda, the “Atara” complex in Lukovë and a city with a marina in “Krorez”. Three destinations of the architect’s yacht trip still without a named developer.

Another plan has paved the way for the yacht’s itinerary, “Lukova PUITD,” a territorial study by the XDGA studio for 45 square kilometers, financed by the German bank KfW and the Albanian Development Fund, covering the entire Lukovë-Borsh-Qeparo-Piqeras strip. The study has been “concluded,” meaning the legal framework is now in place.

Even far from the sea, the mechanism does not stop. In Pogradec, on Lake Pogradec, Miralle Tagliabue's EMBT has designed "Koran Village" for the company Arlis Ndërtim, and "Hotel Millennium" for the Millennium Group.

None of this is a particular scandal. It's the same mechanism: the government paves the way for foreign architects, they unleash their imagination under the Prime Minister's vision, and the money is found, in every way, to build them. These actors only do the performances in public, while the work is carried out work in closed rooms.

I keep coming back to the dedication, “A flamingo killer,” which may be the only completely honest sentence anyone has written in this book. A handwritten joke, by a man who knew exactly what the bird meant to the people marching against him, and still found it fitting to write it.

The Prime Minister’s own preface may explain, at least in part, his vision for Albania. It opens with a claim for God and freedom. He calls the book’s contributors part of something “free from the suffocating comfort of overregulation,” a “freedom from ‘no’ in all its forms.” A “no” that thousands of people are saying in the square and he arrogantly refuses to hear. This book, when read carefully, reads like an eight-hundred-page celebration of the disappearance of “no.”

At the opening of the festival itself, Rama addressed his family of architects as “God’s privileged children” and “the only ones to whom God has given the chance to play God.”

If they are gods, who are the rest of us? Listening to citizens calling for his resignation for 22 consecutive nights, I think I finally understood. We are not the citizens of his Albania, we are its audience./ citizens.al/