By Dorina Pllumbi
On June 19th Bjarke Ingels responded to an article previously published at Politiken regarding the recent demolition of the National Theater building in Tirana. The founder and principal of BIG attempts to clarify his position regarding the event to his fellow Danish citizens. Ingles seems to greatly value his reputation in Denmark. It is as if he needs to protect the purity of an actively proclaimed, and maybe widely accepted role attached to his figure as the image of contemporary Danish architecture. Especially in non-western realities, he highlights his origin and presents himself as coming into these realities with the mission of bringing about western change, development and progress to places that he considers backwards or pre-modern. In addressing his fellow Danish people, he seems to present himself as a sort of a missionary who contributes with his design to the shaping of a new world. On the other hand, he never considers to address the Albanian people whose National Theater building was demolished in a violent manner because of a project he has been actively involved in. From his words he looks surprised with the demolition act, but he still affirms his intentions to continue with the project. Although I find myself an outsider to his relationship with the Danish audience, I am compelled to offer a local Albanian perspective to this discourse by reacting to his text aiming to clarify issues that I find important to be exposed. I do so especially knowing that Ingles has not responded to several attempts from Albanian journalists or activists of the civil society to speak regarding the way the demolition of the theater building happened.
Ingels begins his article with: “A political drama about the demolition of a fascist building in the capital of Albania gives rise to reflection on what role we as architects can and should play in the world we are helping to shape.”
Let’s make it a bit more realistic!
Images conceptualized by Elvin Nuri and graphically elaborated by Merilin Tota
What Ingels calls a political drama is what many Albanians experienced as the erasure of a piece of their history. It is true that the demolished historical building did not meet the standards of a National Theater, but many of us believe that it did not deserve to die. It had a lot of history embedded in its body. In his article, Ingels lazily repeats what he has been told, that this building was designed for the entertainment of fascist soldiers. Historical archives demonstrate this is simply not true. What he calls soldiers’ barracks was a cultural center, designed in 1938 with the initiative of the Albanian government, as the Albanian-Italian Cultural Circle “Skanderbeg”, to then be dedicated entirely to a Cultural Theater. It was created as an institution “to promote cultural, artistic, scientific cooperation between the two countries”. The building was a testimony of a process of socio-cultural modernization of the Albanian society, of key events of the political history of the Albanian state, of the creation of the Albanian Circle of Writers and Artists, and even of the conceiving of Albanology as a field of research. It was adopted for a National Theater by well-known Albanian architects and engineers and has been used for decades as a place hosting the theatrical scene of Albania. The Albanian audience had a particular connection to it. The building housed an archive of a rich theater requisite, wardrobe, photography collection and so on. They were all bulldozed at 4:30am, in the dark, on the very last day of the pandemic lockdown. This double erasure of the building and its material historical archive was experienced as an act of cultural terrorism. I watched it live as it happened, but many of my fellow Albanian citizens were sleeping. They watched it in the morning.
I understand the need Ingels has to save his reputation in Copenhagen, his hometown as he states with sympathy. He justifies himself to the Danish that in his office there are no experts in what he repeatedly calls “fascist architecture”. But he starts in the very beginning of his text by assuring the reader that BIG is a professional international office, which means that it understandably collaborates with other experts. Are we to really believe that they couldn’t find consultants specialized in historical buildings? Wasn’t BIG interested in learning if this building had some value? Actually, they did not even have to hire someone. There have been several historians highlighting its architectural and cultural value. There was EuropaNostra, the pan-European NGO close to UNESCO, that has listed it as one of the Europe’s 7 Most Endangered heritage sites 2020. DoCoMoMo has called for the saving of the building. Even the European Commissioner for Culture Mariya Gabriel called for dialogue on the issue. Ingels, as he explains, may have been isolated from the world for the last two months, reconnecting to Copenhagen, but the movement to save the building lasted 2 years and 3 months. It was all over in local and international media. It is impossible that he did not hear about it.
Ingles says in his article that he has visited Albania, but it seems all he has visited is the Albanian political bubble that people in power have unfortunately created there. The Prime Minister now is commonly known to have an absolute power. A corrupt judicial system is under an ongoing reform. There are open juridical cases about the project of the New National Theater and about the legality of the decision to demolish the historical building and, because of this reform, there is no functioning court to examine these cases. Ingels does not mention any of these facts. He names the movies TAKEN and Borat, to quickly sketch the profile of the country, reinforcing stereotypes on the Albanian people. It looks like Ingels choses to create his idea about Albania only through these movies and the tours his politician friends gave to him. He mentions he has visited the demolished theater building. He does not hesitate to give shallow and fake arguments to devaluate it, speculating with what he proclaims as facts that are easily verifiable to not be true. The dimensions of the building according to him is 12 meters, when in reality it is 22, as shown by the archival technical drawings and as verified by the architectural survey conducted by local architects. Similarly, Ingels states that there was no technical tower dedicated to the stage of the theater, when in reality this tower was constructed during the adaptation of the building to a National Theater. Furthermore, the building was constructed using a sustainable technique of Italian autarchy, one of very few examples of its kind in Europe, and the only in Albania. He does not seem to know, or just ignores the fact that the material used was an ecological one called populit, which he proposes to be replaced by concrete.
As also pointed out by local architect activists, not a single word can be found in Ingels’ text about the resistance to save the building. On top of all the historical values, the building and its surroundings became a place of self-organization, a feature that the Albanian society is aiming to regain after years of totalitarian political oppression. If he, as a European architect, really wanted to contribute to a society that for years struggles to build a stable democracy, he could have proposed for a recognition of this new spontaneous ecology that mushroomed in the very heart of Tirana. The artists, as the primary users, started the resistance against the demolitions of the building. They were joined by activists of civil society, professionals of different fields, intellectuals, independent citizens, retirees, students, journalists. The cause gained popularity and solidarity even at the international level. The resistance community named Alliance for the Protection of the Theatre, a.k.a. as Aleanca, organized a series of events in the courtyard of the theater and later inside of it. They took care of the building, practicing all sorts of maintenance rituals and a Festival for the Protection of the Theater. The building was safeguarded 24/7 by them, even during the pandemic. For years the building was left intentionally in poor conditions and on 2018 was removed from the protected historical city center to give way to its demolition. Regardless of all this, in his text Ingels adopts the political rhetoric of his politician collaborators to generalize resistance against new projects as organized by the opposition parties in Albania. He mentions protests at the central square as an example. Interestingly enough, he never speaks about the resistance against his project. This is an attempt to negate and devaluate Aleanca, that was a multitude of people coming from all sort of backgrounds. Open to all the political spectrum and beyond, this movement was not an exclusivity of the opposition parties, although they adjoined it. Aleanca became an autonomous, self-organized institution of care and mutual aid for the building, for citizens in need, and the society as a whole. It became an informal institution of direct democracy that criticized and challenged the official institutions. So, this was a big thing for the Albanian society. Ingels ignored it then and continues to ignore it now, as if it never existed.
Ingels mentions to have elaborated a scenario of preservation of the demolished building. It is the first time that we hear this. And again, he mentions it to the Danish, not to the Albanians. There has been an open microphone installed by Aleanca from the very beginning of the resistance at the courtyard of the theater, welcoming to everyone. He could have been a special guest to this microphone. He never considered this possibility. He had chosen to speak only to his collaborators, who had made up their mind that they wanted to kill the building, and along with it this democratic emancipatory resistance.
Ingels does not mention that his proposal shrinks the new theater building to only 1/3 of the original site, to accommodate the luxurious towers to be built on the remaining public land where the theater once stood. It was his sketches and diagrams that revealed this plan. It was his design that acted as the tool to materialize this idea. As a well-known master of arrows, he manipulated volumes using his diagrammatic technique, a characteristic of his pragmatic architectural style that accommodates whatever required by his clients. Through his design he participated in projecting this public land grab. He actively used his authority as the leading Danish architect, as a brand, as a BIG name, to enable the demolition of the National Theater. He acted as a guarantee of his friends in power when he accepted to be paraded in front of the Albanian public acting as an expert witness to convince them about his vision. It is impressive how he proudly mentions results of his convincing abilities when he counts “101/103 performing artists endorsed a request to have the new National Theater built. A new national scene is taking shape.” Nobody ever doubted that Tirana needs a new theater. He could have used his authority as BIG to advocate for the saving of the existing one as the old historical theater scene, to then create the new scene on another site.
The protest has currently gained the status of an active institution in Tirana. It demonstrates an urgency to protect the cultural history. It seems like the only way to prevent that likeminded persons like Ingels easily identify Albanians with gangster movie characters, while ignoring our cultural history, and as part of it, the Albanian theater history whom he has contributed to annihilate. It may be modest, but nobody has the right to take it away from us and restart from scratch with new buildings imposed from the top, even if they are designed by a corporate architectural office named BIG. We expect that he distances himself from the act of cultural genocide that took place at the site of the National Theater in Albania. Instead, he appears here at the Politiken stating that his office is confident in their design, reaffirming his connections. That makes his design a violent tool used towards the historical building and Tirana’s city center. That makes him an ally of the police brutally violating protesters against the demolition of the theater. An allyship that started with debasing the historical building as soldiers’ barracks. BIG participated in killing what was a welcoming theater building, characterized by openness, lightness, and humbleness. A cultural monument of the people, safeguarded by the people. A monument that did not want to dominate, although he repeatedly calls it fascist architecture. I wonder which architecture is acting as the fascist one here, the one we had or the one imposed to come?
Dorina Pllumbi is an albanian architect and PhD Candidate at the Department of Architecture, TU Delft, Netherland.
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The above article is published in Politiken, Denmark, as a response to a prior article by Bjarke Ingels related to the Demolition of the National Theatre of Albania
