Alban Tower | Archea Associati

The building, part of a complex programme of renovation of the entire historic city centre - designed and conceived between 1920 and 1935 by the Italian architects Armando Brasini (Rome 1879-1965) and Gherardo Bosio (Florence 1903-1941) - is configured as the conjunction of four towers of different heights and colours, reflecting the founding design of the city. A design centred on the tracing of two axes, a cardo and a decumanus, still clearly visible today in the urban fabric of the city.

The tower - the result of an international competition in which some of the most important names in European architecture had participated in the early 2000s - was won by the Florentine studio with the idea of going beyond the American conception of the skyscraper (according to Louis Sullivan’s definition) to propose a profile inspired by Italian towers, from Palazzo della Signoria in Florence to the Velasca tower built after World War II.

From the point of view of design and therefore of the skyline, the tower occupies a minimum amount of space on the ground through an obligatory narrowing of the volume at the base, which subsequently, and in a staggered manner, widens at the top, opening up like a tree with branches of different heights extending towards the sky.
The design and construction was completed after more than eighteen years of work also due to many external events, from the post-2008 economic situation to the violent earthquake of 2019, which the building withstood with extraordinary strength also due to an absolutely innovative and original structural concept. The building, in fact, contrary to any skyscraper but consistent with the conception of ancient tower 

structures, was designed in collaboration with the engineering firm AeI Progetti of Florence as a hollow concrete tube pierced by measured openings so that each floor is devoid of pillars. Lifts are placed on three of the four sides of the tower and one of the two internal emergency staircases is hung and suspended in the middle of the sequence of floors.

It is also a singular and exceptional building with two foundations, one on sixth basement level, which supports the car parks, and another on the first basement level on which the entire tower rests. In short, they are like two buildings placed on top of each other, one underground and one above ground, with two different structures, of which the second foundation constitutes and creates a new ground.

The façade again refers to the metaphor of the tree with a basement part -the trunk- made of solid green pigmented concrete panels set with small circular gems of Murano glass in five different colours. The panels, smoothed and polished, slowly disappear upwards to make way for lighter aluminium elements in 13 different colours that open and curve like branches and leaves.functionally, the complex is used entirely for offices, where the Israeli embassy in Albania is also located, while the highest part of the building houses a café, a panoramic restaurant, as well as a wellness centre, a gymnasium and a swimming pool occupying the roof of one of the four towers. A helicopter landing strip has been built on the roof of the highest tower.

Expressed in numbers, the building is represented by its maximum height of 105 metres, the more than 15,600 square metres of floor space in a volume of 46,750 cubic metres, the 27-metre depth of the foundation excavation in which the more than 100 parking spaces for the 25 floors of the building and the main plant engineering areas are located, and the more than 450 windows that design the façades. More than 3,900 tonnes of high ductility steel, 19,000 cubic metres of concrete, 350 tonnes of metal carpentry for the openings and 80 tonnes of metal carpentry for the stairs were used for the entire construction. 

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Year: 2005 - 2023
Location: Tirana , Albania Typology: mixed use tower
Client: Al&Gi / Alban Xhaferi
Cost: 30.000.000 €
Built surface: 15.600 sqm
Volume: 46.750 mc
Design control: Alessandro Riccomi Structure: aei progetti Srl
Systems: Studio TI, TFE ingegneria

Project:
Archea Associati (Laura Andreini, Marco Casamonti, Silvia Fabi, Giovanni Polazzi)

photo credits: © Besart Cani, © Savorelli Associati