Construction works began for the new Albanian National Theatre with the cornerstone symbolically set during a groundbreaking ceremony for another impressive architectural project of the 21st century Tirana, according to a design by the renowned Danish architect Bjarke Ingels.

The new Theatre building is designed to provide optimum conditions for the stage actors and spectators, but it is also set to become one of the most beautiful theatre buildings in Europe.

The bow tie-shaped volume on the outside clearly divides the three main spaces or the functioning areas in a theatre building: Front of House, or the area where visitors can interact with the theatre spaces, including the hall, foyer, black box; the Back-of-House area designed to host the administrative and technical activities, as well as the needed premises for the actors, and the centre or the main auditorium that will connect the two buildings. The main auditorium will be located in the middle, sandwiched by the front-of-house activities facing south, and all of the back-of-house activities and services to the north. Thanks to the shape, the building will house four performance spaces and the new theatre will have a capacity of 1514 seats.

Prime Minister Edi Rama attended the event together with the Minister of Culture Elva Margariti, Mayor of Tirana Erion Veliaj, as well as renowned stage artists, where the design by Bjarke Ingels’ architecture firm was unveiled.

 

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Hello everyone! It is really a pleasure that we are finally here today to materialize a very long history of ups and downs and vicissitudes, and as we were waiting out there, I told the architect: “I don’t think you have ever attended or will ever attend in your lifetime an inauguration with police forces surrounding the construction site.”

Meanwhile, what matters most and the beauty of this all is that the very actor portraying the prefect in the movie Concert in ’36 has joined us on our side and is not on the side of those misbehaving and seeking to sabotage the concert. We can do nothing about it, because this is the contemporary development history of this country.

In the meantime, I have often thought about why the theatre community, except the ones who have seen the new National Theatre, the new stadium, the Skanderbeg square as the stage of the sword dance of politics. Why the theatre community? Despite the different political convictions and sympathies of this community protagonists, they all almost unanimously distrusted this process or the desire and readiness, as well as the ambition, to finally build a decent building that would live up to its name as the National Theatre!

I won’t probably be able to give a thorough and complete answer to this question, but I believe that one of the reasons is that the National Theatre community refused to agree for a very long time, unable to change the course of events with the inertia of the daily life and work in very tough conditions of the previous Theatre infrastructure, and the long decades of pledges and promises, but nobody really and seriously embarked on the work on construction of a new National Theatre.

This project goes beyond just a good National Theatre building for Albania. This project will be the jewel in the crown of a series of works that have made Tirana to emerge from itself and outside its old framework and have projected Tirana to become a European capital, where things are made to capture the attention of others.

Concluding this part and the comparison with the stadium, and by voicing confidence that the new theatre will become a destination of the international artists too, I would like to underline that the new theatre will become just a link on the long chain of the recently reborn institutions that have been transformed into spaces of this century. The Gallery of Arts site has been opened across the street here, as the preservation conditions of the art collection housed there have worsened, because of the inability to build the needed spaces that necessarily serve the ambition to meet and adapt to the needs of the time.

Of course it was the project, the architectural work there that caused this immediateness and the good news today is that the mystery whether a tower will be constructed along with the National Theatre has been finally solved. This is the theatre! This is the square!

I would like to appreciate Bjarke, who, let’s admit it, in addition to being one of the most famous architects nowadays, is also one of the highest-paid and most expensive architects, to put it clearly. However, we should be grateful to him for understanding that this is not the country to set the frightening charges of his studio and I can state we have reached a good deal on this case. I have asked Bjarke to do this for Albania and Albanians, because this way he would have an argument when being in front of Saint Peter, who would ask him: “Ok, you earned a lot of money. Did you do something for the people or just worked for the capitalists and for the wealthiest individuals?”

Thank you!