MVRDV has won the international competition for The Grand Ballroom, a striking new mixed-use complex that will transform the site of the former Asllan Rusi Sports Palace in Tirana.
Envisioned as a 100-metre-wide sphere, the project brings together a 6,000-seat arena, residential apartments, a hotel, and ground-level retail, creating an urban destination where competition and community coexist under one monumental roof.
Developed in collaboration with Trema Tech shpk, Likado BV, Albanian Capital Group shpk, and BCN Investments BV, the design blends spectacle and inclusivity. The Grand Ballroom will become a new civic landmark on the road linking the airport to the city centre — a sphere that invites people not only to watch sport, but to live and play within it.
A Sphere for Living, Playing, and Gathering
The Grand Ballroom’s form is both bold and efficient, accommodating multiple functions on a compact site.
By stacking the hotel and apartments above the arena, MVRDV’s design maximises density while opening space for public plazas and outdoor courts around the base.
The rounded geometry ensures every side of the building engages equally with its surroundings, eliminating rear façades and encouraging permeability.
As the structure tapers inward at its base, it carves generous public areas that invite the neighbourhood in; as it tapers again toward the top, it forms terraces for residents overlooking the Tirana skyline. The result is a building that appears both monumental and humane — a seamless vertical community where the public and private realms overlap.
A Vertical Landscape of Sport and Life
The Grand Ballroom’s functions are arranged in layered strata within the spherical volume.
At ground level, the building’s contact with the earth forms a lower-ground floor lined with shops, cafés, and amenities that sustain the arena’s activity.
Above lies the arena bowl, flanked by two training courts tucked beneath the stands.
Two floors of hotel rooms hover above the arena, giving guests the rare chance to watch games directly from their windows. From the hotel’s upper level, cantilevered lounges open through an oculus in the arena ceiling, establishing a dramatic visual link between players and spectators.
Higher still, the apartments are embedded within the sphere’s double-shell structure, forming a vast semi-outdoor courtyard garden — a green, tree-filled void that mirrors the bowl of the arena below. This inner garden acts as both a communal retreat and a living landscape suspended above the city.
Light, Air, and Community
Natural light and ventilation animate every layer of the sphere.
Openings punctuate the building’s skin to create three- and four-storey green terraces, each with its own character and communal theme.
Residents enjoy a mix of outward-facing apartments and dual-aspect units that overlook both the city and the inner courtyard — even catching glimpses of the arena through the oculus.
At the top, duplex penthouses with private rooftop terraces crown the building, while a double-height skybar offers panoramic views across Tirana. The Grand Ballroom is thus more than a building; it’s an inhabited ecosystem, a city within a sphere.
A Beacon for Sport and Celebration
“The Grand Ballroom will become a beacon, aiming to inspire and encourage people to play and to watch sport. A place to play, meet, and celebrate!” said Winy Maas, founding partner of MVRDV. “The spherical shape is a reference to the round ball used by so many sports. Yet it also recalls enlightenment temples — from Étienne-Louis Boullée’s Cenotaph for Newton to Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome. A great sphere in the heart of Tirana can similarly become a temple to sport and community.”
The project captures Tirana’s growing architectural ambition, joining the city’s expanding “collection” of bold, expressive structures.
By uniting the playful and the poetic, MVRDV’s Grand Ballroom transforms the archetype of the arena into an architecture of participation — a place where people come together to perform, to live, and to celebrate.
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Images: ©MVRDV
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