Barcelona Tower | Bofill Taller de Arquitectura

Any addition to Tirana’s burgeoning skyline calls for a simple and elegant concept. This is especially true of the architecture being built around Skanderbeg Square, the city’s main plaza and cultural heart, where projects must make a bold contribution to the site without confusing its historical identity.

Barcelona Tower serves as a modern landmark, rising 190 metres into spectacular view with a single “twisting” motion. It is both graceful and pragmatic: the twist makes for a more energy- efficient and aerodynamic building envelope (more resistant to wind loads) and combines with a central concrete core to support the overall structure. To create this form, the floor plates rotate around the core by a consistent number of degrees as they ascend and taper off towards the sky – a kind of obelisk – accommodating first offices and then a majority of apartments. They are set into a chunky “plinth” containing commercial space at ground level, which works together with the rich red of the concrete pigment to demarcate this architectural world from the one beyond it.

The Taller began this project by looking through the Albanian Photographic and Graphic Art Collection as well as at its own archive. Twisting and tapering, the formal quality of the traditional fustanella skirt seemed to resemble the stone pillars of La Pirámide and Casa Mont-ras, both built during the 1970s, and felt fitting for a new monument in Tirana.