Albania deserves a genuine manifesto to honour the pride of an ancient and tenacious people who know how to be gracious. A strong yet light symbol, authentic in its structure, rational and poetic, just as an eagle.
As I approach Tirana, proud capital city, I am greeted by the dynamism of the soaring eagle, a testimony to a unique moment in history, that of the positive making of a nation, the Albanian ‘yes we can’. The nation that granted the passport, thus the wings, to Albert Einstein, has taken flight into its future, strengthened by people who believe in and love their country.
The challenges are not over, and nor do they ever end, but this marks an extraordinary moment in our shared world: we are a civilised people living in the midst of our art.
This building, if you will forgive my enthusiasm, is not just a building, but an idea of territory and history. This new presence will not go unnoticed because it is meaningful. It epitomises, in one volume, our belief that architecture is the link between the DNA of a place, its present and its future. It is a building that expresses the values of a nation and the values of the surrounding Mediterranean. The eagle of Tirana works with light, evoking the history of Mediterranean architecture, from classicism - taking up its orders and iconographic power - to the dynamism of the Baroque, passing through the purity of the Renaissance and Gothic geometry, to the present, rising to the challenge of sustainability.
The psychology of perception is a sensitive science that determines the scale of an intervention along the approach. From a distance, The Eagle is a form that illustrates to us why it emerges in this space; up close, it is an inviting, open presence that welcomes us and shows its simplicity, from within, it is a world.
The transition between public life, private life and intimate life is calibrated so that the degree of detail rather than increasing decreases, to leave room for man: the true protagonist of the space.
But we are not building a space, but a place, where man finds his space in this place.
The perimeter balconies provide shade during the summer months and allow for solar gain during the winter months, fulfilling the primary law of sustainable energy building.
The Eagle is a synthesis of the complexity of life.
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