We recently named Tirana one of Europe’s best city breaks for 2025 (it also made it onto our best budget cities in Europe list) – but if you have been before and are planning another trip, the place might look a little different next time you visit.
Dezeen has reported that eight new skyscrapers are planned or currently being built across the city, and they’re not your bog-standard buildings: everything from an abstract map of Albania to the face of one of the country’s national heroes have been incorporated into these ambitious designs. Let’s take a look.
Dutch design studio MVRDV are responsible for two of the projects, the first of which is the Skanderbeg Building. It’s already nearing completion and doubles as a ‘figurative sculpture’ of Gjergj Kastrioti, a military commander who rebelled against the Ottoman Empire – he’s known locally as Skanderbeg.
The other is the Downtown One, set to be the tallest building in Albania when it opens later this year. ‘Ten years ago it was the poorest country in Europe. Now it is a country with energy and ambition, working towards great economic improvements,’ said Winy Maas, founding partner of MVRDV, ‘We want to express this with our building.’
Portuguese studio OODA also has two projects on the go: Hora Vertikale, 13 staggered cubes which each contain seven floors of apartments, and Bond Tower, a skyscraper that appears more like two separate buildings that bend away from one another.
Next up there’s Rruga Adem Jashari, which will, once completed, overtake the Downtown One to become Albania’s tallest building, while a building called Puzzle Tirana throws together abstract shapes and greenery as a way to ‘fuse the urban and the rural together’. Tirana Vertical Forest goes even greener, featuring 3,200 shrubs and 145 trees co-existing with 105 apartments.
Lastly, New Boulevard will be a mixed-use building that tapers towards the sky, and it’s planned as part of a shiny new cultural district in north Tirana. You can read more about the buildings (and their designers) on Dezeen.
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