The WHYs AND THE BECAUSEs

Why starting an architectural blog/page… in Albania?

Well, you are done with university (in case you are) and you are thrown into this lion´s cage called reality.

You feel unprepared, scared and unable to adjust within the new environment, without real life tutors willing to teach you, missing enormously the circle of people you shared discussions and passions with.

You have studied at least 5 years, developing concepts, analyzing both the explicit and the implicit, going through debates, feeling superior while knowing the surname of Rem’s first wife. You dress on black just like ‘them’, own a professional pen, a pocket-sized notebook, and a ‘too conceptual’ Instagram profile (a few ‘likes’, but quality among the ‘likes’).

You read about a young Renzo Piano winning a competition and building one of the most important buildings in Paris; about Tadao Ando opening his architectural office without attending any architecture school, about Frank Lloyd Wright designing more than 1000 structures and meanwhile you practice secretly your Pritzker Prize speech.

Then you graduate in Albania and …Hello Autocad! Everyday designing bathrooms and preparing coffee for your boss, struggling to make ends meet. Some of your friends work in other fields, even talented ones that couldn’t find a job in architecture. There are very few successful architectural firms that cover 80% of the market, full with underpaid young architects who can’t find enough space to express new ideas or new concepts.

While it is impossible to open your own architecture firm, you become a freelancer (the cool term describing the unemployed), surviving on a multitasking attitude, from one interior project (again underpaid) to some money earned from rendering, work on the thesis project of a ‘soon-to-be’ colleague and so on. Meanwhile you are still living with your parents, at the age of 30, rehearsing every night that same old speech.

Maybe this seems the same reality that you encounter also in other countries, but if it is difficult for a young architect in Germany, the Albanian environment should be multiplied by 1000, and voila… what you get is:

Young Architects in Albania

This blog offers a space for expressing ideas, but also challenges and problems. A space for students, but also professionals, for new and old struggles.

Why? Cause we just care! There are hundreds of very specific topics regarding our realities which are ignored or taken for granted. Let´s change that.