Urban Façades, Political Shades: Tirana’s Nationalistic Turn in Architecture and its Subtexts

This article explores the use of nationalistic narratives in architecture in the Albanian urban landscape, focusing more on Tirana as a reflection of shifting power dynamics, ideology, and national identity across different political regimes. From the early 20th century, through the state-socialist era, and into the contemporary neoliberal period, architecture in Tirana has been used as a tool of political expression and domination. Despite the ideological clashes between nationalism with both socialism and neoliberalism, these regimes have employed nationalistic rhetoric to shape architectures and consolidate political power. Under the state-socialist regime, exemplified by buildings like the National History Museum and Skanderbeg Museum in Krujë, architecture merged nationalism with socialist ideology to project an Albanian national identity as European and Socialist. In the 2010s, under Prime Minister Edi Rama, nationalistic architecture is currently emerging as a blend of national identity with neoliberal agendas. This trend, exemplified, among others, by projects like Downtown One Tirana (Map building) and Skanderbeg Building designed by MVRDV, often reduces Albanian identity to commodified symbols designed for foreign consumption, prioritizing economic gain over a rich and diverse cultural heritage. The article concludes that while the power dynamics have evolved, the instrumentalization of architecture by those in power persists, albeit in more playful forms and through the figure of the star architect. The recent nationalistic-themed architectures in Tirana exemplify how Balkan nationalism, on the one hand, is often perceived as a marker of “backwardness”, yet on the other hand, this very backwardness can be exoticized when it is reinterpreted with irony or humor by prominent Western architects.