Building Architecture Culture, the Albanian pavilion at the Venice Biennale highlights the reciprocal relationship between architecture and society. The discipline extends beyond practice to academia and the broader public sphere, where spatial ideas are shared, debated, and reflected upon. This third sphere ideally serves as the conscience of the profession. The Albanian pavilion and its public program act as a temporary version of this space, on display and discussing Albania’s evolving architectural identity. These conversations will continue beyond the exhibition through a podcast, created in collaboration with Koozarch, ensuring that those unable to attend in Venice can also engage with these dialogues.

PUBLIC PROGRAMME
by Anneke Abhelakh with Andi Arifaj and Adonel Myzyri, in collaboration with KoozArch.

THURSDAY, 3 JULY 2025 | Pavilion of Albania, Arsenale (VE) & online (podcast)
12pm CET
On Agency, with Andi Eftimi; Elidor Mëhilli
Albania’s built environment has long been a reflection of its political and economic transformations. From centralized planning under socialism to the unregulated expansion of the post-communist decades, architecture has navigated shifting constraints and newfound freedoms. Prior to the 1970s, there was no dedicated school of architecture. The architect, as an intellectual who could question and think freely, didn’t exist as such. First and foremost, he was a worker and then a technician who worked rigorously, following the ideology as the only theoretical framework. After the 1970s, the school of architecture became a space for the children of the politburo. No longer just technicians, they now aimed to interpret the doctrine of “socialist in content and nationalist in form”, reshaping the profession. But can one truly be an architect under an oppressive regime?

16pm CET
Freedom, with Lea Ypi; Elisabetta Terragni; Nebi Bardhoshi
Freedom is a paradox. It is both an aspiration and a condition, something to be achieved yet always in negotiation. In Albania, freedom has been a radical shift, experienced as rupture rather than evolution. The collapse of the totalitarian regime in 1992 brought with it the euphoria of liberation but also the disorientation of unregulated change. Cities became sites of improvisation, where individuals reclaimed space in an urgent assertion of ownership. Public and private blurred, not by design but by necessity. What did freedom mean in those years? For many, it was the right to build without constraint, to shape space without restriction. Three decades later, freedom continues to shape Albania’s built environment in unexpected ways. It manifests in the absence of a rigid architectural canon, allowing for experimentation, but also in the vulnerabilities that come with deregulation. Unconstrained by strict planning policies, architecture in Albania operates at the intersection of ambition and risk, creativity and consequence. What happens when freedom extends beyond personal agency to define an entire profession? When the lack of limits generates not just opportunity but also responsibility?

Stay tuned, more conversations are coming this fall!