Cloaked in layers of white disks, architecture studio BIG has revealed plans for a mixed-use building in Tirana containing apartments, offices, cultural spaces and water features.

Named Tirana Fountain Plaza, the cloud-like building will be raised on slim white columns over Rinia Park, designed to keep the ground level largely open as a public space.

BIG has won the competition to design the Tirana Fountain Plaza. Image by Engram Studio

BIG recently won the competition to design the building, which will contain offices, apartments, a hotel and cultural spaces.

Rows of perforated white disks will line the glazed facades and animate the interior spaces.

It will be built in Tirana's Rinia Park

Two curved volumes wrapped in fluted glass at either end of the building will connect the upper volume to the ground.

Renders of the design show it placed at the edge of the Rinia Park on Rruga Sami Frashëri, where the Taiwan Center restaurant complex and adjacent Taiwan Pool water feature currently stand.

Perforated white disks will surround the facades. Image by Engram Studio

BIG aimed to improve the natural landscape of Rinia Park in its design for the Tirana Fountain Plaza, surrounding it with planted gardens and adding rainwater management features.

The studio will preserve the existing Taiwan Pool and capture, store and reuse the water in a closed-loop system.

Read: BIG to weave tree-like interfaith complex through Albanian hillside

BIG's design aims to irrigate the landscape to help reduce the risk of flooding in the area and cool the surrounding park.

"We have reimagined urban living in three dimensions – not as a vertical extrusion or a tower competing for attention on the skyline, but as a cloud of homes hovering above the park," said BIG founder Bjarke Ingels.

"Rather than diminishing the park or displacing public life, the building enhances and accommodates both."

The ground floor level under the elevated building will remain a public park

"Like a cloud, it casts a cooling shadow over the public space below," Ingels continued. "By freeing up the ground, it also creates more park and public space than exists today."

"The project's most striking expression of this inversion is an upside-down fountain. Instead of water rising from the ground, it falls from above, as a summer shower or a gentle autumn drizzle."

Tirana Fountain Plaza will contain cultural spaces, offices and apartments

Tirana Fountain Plaza will be situated near the Pyramid of Tirana, a former museum that was renovated into a cultural hub by MVRDV.

Elsewhere in Tirana, BIG is building the bow-tie-shaped National Theatre of Albania. In 2020, activists were arrested for protesting the demolition of the original 1930s theatre to make way for the new construction.

BIG is also working on plans to add a cluster of interfaith pavilion buildings on a hillside near Tirana.

The images are by BIG unless stated.

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