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TID Tower

The site for the tower qualifies as a prime location; the tower complements the most important monuments of Tirana: the Skanderbeg statue, the oldest mosque, the clock tower and –at the foot of the tower- a memorial tomb for the city’s founder Suleiman Pasha.

Being aware of this precarious historical line-up, the tower is designed as a monolith, avoiding the image of the modern glass tower. Starting from an ellipse and ending as a rectangle, the building has a simple shape which fully captures the Mediterranean light and generates a wide range of unexpected shadows. It does not symbolize anything but instead highlights an environmental –and as such, cultural- condition. On the ground floor, the building is designed as a constellation of 3 singular buildings: the tower of 85 m height coming straight down to the ground, its circular base freeing up public space; a 5 storey glass building with a cantilevering roof that creates an open air galleria; and finally, a small concrete building with a hollowed out quarter dome, embracing the tomb of Suleiman Pasha. Together, these buildings generate a multiple and diverse environment, enhancing the most durable quality of any Mediterranean city: its public space.

The building and base are very specific in the way they shape the outside space, while they are designed to be program-neutral on the inside: the generic layout of the floors and the rough skin of the tower (50% open - 50% closed) allow to accommodate any program.

The construction process consisted in getting rid of badly copied international building solutions and replacing them with new solutions with the proper amount of manageable precision. It meant that we –together with the client- had to find and create local capabilities, resulting in an unexpected range of high quality but low-tech solutions.

Apollon Windows & Doors tailor-made a new facade system with slim profiles for this design project to achieve the required thermal performance and to give the maximum visibility.  For this project it is used a special scissor hinge that provides a paralel move outward of the sash of one foot.

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