Elements often repeat and continue from one side of the space to another to reinforce the idea of space continuity: a grid of Bulb fiction pendants designed by BIG Product across the north side, a grid of Artemide Alphabet of Light lights around columns throughout the space & larger pill shaped lights across all meeting rooms. Each conference room is furnished with Scoop chairs designed by BIG for Halle. The color of the chairs designates the room.
The site is laid out as a grid of , x , meter squares, creating one continuous pixelated surface. As a topographic map the surface is morphed to form a terraced landscape of towers, accommodating . m housing, hotel, offices and shops. The project becomes an accumulation of individual niches and outdoor spaces forming a collective organic architecture a Scandinavian high rise typology incorporating the human scale, the rationality and flexibility of Danish building tradition.
Like a seismic fault line, the architectural crusts of planet earth are lifted and mingled to form an underlying continuous space of caves and niches, lookouts and overhangs. Rather than a single perimeter delineating an interior and an exterior, the façade is conceived as a sinuous membrane meandering across the site, delineating interior spaces and exterior gardens in a seamless continuum oscillating between the city and the park.
The first stages of project development at BIG always involve a careful study of the site and the programmatic requirements. In the case of the Escher Tower, the site was an orthogonal intersection of an east-west highway and a north-south subway line, populated by a department store and a medical business. The program was identical hotel rooms with the only interesting activities to be placed in a single floor at the ground.
A rooftop venue and café are accessible to the public as well. The sloping of the roof creates an amphitheatre-like space that is framed by a dramatic backdrop of the city itself. With open venues, one sheltered and one with a rooftop view, and traditionally hidden theatre spaces being revealed out towards the city the new National Theatre of Albania will be both stage and actor in the city of Tirana.