Sky-K

This building is located in the Mediterranean city of Durrës a mainly residential city and the coastal city closest to Tirana, the capital. Sky-K, as we decided to call the building in honor of Kejsi, our great client and friend, its placed on a hided lot immediately behind Rruga Taulantia, a street recently transformed into a sea linear park and recreational space within an urban context rich in industrial heritage from the port area.

The residential tower was conceived with a focus on minimizing its footprint in situating it very carefully on the lot and later controlling its scale and mass, trying to not to disturb views and light from the surrounding buildings.

The floor plan geometry is a result of that, first liberating the entire ground floor, so that this level is a Mediterranean garden, with a lot of vegetation designed to enrich the local neighbors. Then an oval shaped podium that meets the ground with just 6 strategic concrete columns. And after two slender like chimneys towers, each in a very visible and different color. The chimneys continuous façade, each with the same small plan foot print, is accentuated by an undulating concrete texture that enhances its verticality. It is interrupted by a series of round shaped openings varying in size that in fact are the terraces openings, not having any of them a visible glass on the facade.

These terraces frame the beautiful views of the 360 degrees surrounding landscape, including the Adriatic Sea, the Durrës Port, and the Hill of Durrës. This façade’s articulation provides the building with a big range of apartment sizes and typologies and each unit benefit from at least a couple of terraces that promote effective cross-ventilation.

At the end, seeing the final result, where we arrived very slowly, we remained in one hand very surprised with it, but at the same time, and in the other hand, very happy with the client reaction and hopefully with the Durrës inhabitants’ reaction to the close green ground floor belonging to the more locals, and the two skinny and bright colored towers evoking the city’s industrial past and belonging to the whole city view.

Location: Durres, Albania
Design years: from 2024 to 2025
Construction year: from 2026 to 2027

Architects: selgascano + FRPO Rodríguez & Oriol
Principals in charge: José Selgas, Lucía Cano, Pablo Oriol, Fernando Rodríguez

Project team
Interior designer(s): selgascano + FRPO Rodríguez & Oriol
Landscape architect(s): selgascano + FRPO Rodríguez & Oriol
Renderings: Playtime

General contractor: TBD
Program: Collective housing
Structural system:
Major materials: Concrete, glass, steel
Site area: 1400 sqm
Building area (footprint area): 430 sqm
Total floor area: 9500 sqm
Cost of construction: TBD