The intense wave of construction with high towers, voluminous and often urbanally unreasonable buildings continued throughout 2025, mainly in Tirana and the coast.
Recent developments showed a clear trend: the projects are being accompanied by strong propaganda activity on the part of the government, which seeks to legitimize them through an international architecture festival.
In response, Citizens.al built the column "Tirana Vertical", with a series of research that highlighted the exclusion of public interest from the urban development process.
The towers that are changing Tirana
This year too, the tower projects did not stop, further challenging the criteria set in urban plans.
Citizens.al analyzed Tirana Center Masterplan, a competition privately promoted by entrepreneur Astrit Veliaj, which resulted in the winner being the project of the French studio l'AUC for the development of multi-storey towers in the area of the former Tirana Circus, behind the National Museum.
The project, with around 5 towers up to 60 floors, is expected to extend to over 17,000 m2 plot, where there are currently about 35 buildings, including four buildings up to 9 floors, as well as the public buildings of the Metropol Theater and the municipality's "Info-Point".
The vision of this master plan continued that encountered on the southwest side with towers up to 71 floors high in the "Grand Park Skyline".
Citizens.al brought a map showing "brutal transformation"Tirana's tower blocks." It turned out that in about 10 years the government reviewed or approved about 140 buildings, half of which were 24 to 100 stories high, and most of the decisions have not yet been made public.
In a June analytical article, Citizens.al identified 10 concrete giants that dominate the capital, displaying a kind of uncontrolled competition where the only limit to height is now the sky.
New volumes seem to be rising without any concern for environmental and social impact, a concrete example was seen in the project of 17 towers on Lake Farka.
This competition was requested to be legitimized by the government at the international architecture festival "Bread and Heart", for which Citizens.al held a critical approachAt this festival, the vision to expand the idea of towers to other cities such as Durrës, Vlora, Shkodra, Saranda, etc. was openly presented.
The exception is becoming the norm
No area in Tirana has conveyed more than the former Blloku the tension between the interest of development and the excesses of urban plans.
In the "Vertical Tirana" column, we emphasized how at least 13 tower projects It broke the criteria of the urban plan, later becoming the norm for the area, which did not allow tall buildings.
This transformation was made within the framework of commercial interest for massive densification, often over space requirements community, public access and urban heritage.
Such developments are carried out without transparency, away from the attention of traditional media and at the expense of the residents who live there.
The research on the transformation of the former Republican Guard area, promised to become a park for citizens, clearly showed how greed for towers gave shape to an abusive project, which started as a 14-story hotel and then obtained a new permit for a 35-story building: Platinium Tower.
But if in this case a new permit was obtained "in an old hole", in the case of the former Sheraton hotel, the result was completely different.
Citizens.al showed that the Kastrati group received special treatment by starting and continuing without building permit the expansion of the Mak-Albania complex with 6 towers.
The works began in 2019, while the company obtained the permits in 2021. The authorities were content with the argument that "there were no complaints"Otherwise, for ordinary citizens, illegal construction has been a constant persecution with frequent government campaigns.
The secret project of the government villa “No. Red”
At the end of the year, Citizens.al exposed the most symbolic case of the misuse of public funds for the sake of aesthetics and exquisite taste of the government's inner circle of architects: Villa No. 5, or otherwise "Villa Number Red".
Located on one of the hills of the lake park, it was reconstructed through closed tenders, for 6 million eurosThe project was made by a foreign studio, but despite this a local studio was contracted.
Meanwhile, 5 months after its first use, precisely at the "Bread and Heart" festival, the villa couldn't even withstand the first autumn rains: the roof leaked.
The transformation of the festival into a foundation was also presented at the villa in question, a move about which the government agencies AZHT and AKPT refused to provide information.
This transformation, given the fact that the first edition of the festival was accompanied by a lack of transparency regarding costs and funds, raises suspicions of an attempt to hide the necessary invoices for the second edition of "Bread and Heart", scheduled to be held in June 2026.
Thus, in a context where urban plans are violated or changed at such a pace that they seem to respond more to private interests than to stable rules, where the race for towers receives the blessing of the Prime Minister in procedures that are not at all transparent, and where historical and natural spaces are violated without consultation with the public, urban development is no longer just an architectural challenge, but a challenge of good governance and shared values.
The attempt to divert this discussion solely to the aesthetic side and the fact that the projects are being done by foreign architects is just propaganda aimed at legitimizing this trend.
Cities are not just concrete aesthetics, 3D renderings in presentations, or a luxury villa on top of a hill. They are landscapes, spaces, histories, and above all, people who live, work, and build their daily lives within this territory.
Erblin Vukaj has completed his studies in “Communication Sciences” and further mastered (MSc) in “European and International Journalism” at the University of Tirana. Since 2012, Vukaj has been working as a professional journalist, gaining experience in online media, print media, radio and television. He has covered various issues such as current affairs, health, environment and sports. In parallel, he has led and been involved in several research projects on the communist past in Albania.
