Exploring the store and its different levels feels like a carefully curated environment where furniture is never only storage: interweaving carpets become dressing rooms, countertops are a sculptural stack of elements, magic carpets for the shoe display double as furniture for the shoppers to sit and try the footwear. The upper levels of the store are more refined and continue the idea of furniture as artifact.
The program organization of the venues informs the bow tie-shaped volume on the outside: the main auditorium is located in the middle, sandwiched by the front-of-house activities facing south, and all of the back-of-house activities and services to the north. The facades on each side of the building reveal the interior program to passersby outside, creating a storybook for the public and allowing the theatre operation to act as a stage in its own right.
The bow tie-shaped National Theatre of Albania is a -in- cultural venue tailored to Tirana’s thriving theatre and performance art scene. Located in the cultural and administrative heart of downtown Tirana, adjacent to the iconic Skanderbeg Square, the National Opera and the National Art Gallery, the new building replaces an aging theatre building which no longer met the needs of the actors, guests or the general public.
The byproducts are water and carbon monoxide. Combined with the iron oxide, we can make steel and with further chemical reactors, we can make hard and soft plastics! Every single resource will be recycled. The soft plastics will give us inflatable membranes, so we can make pressurized environments where we can grow plants and have rootzone gardens for water purification so we can even start enjoying the water. We can create agriculture, hydroponics, and aquaponics to grow food to sustain human life!
The public servants won’t be some remote administrators taking decisions behind thick walls, but will be visible in their daily work from all over the market place via the light wells and courtyards. From outside the panoramic windows allow the citizens to see their city at work. In reverse the public servants will be able to look out and into the market place’s making sure that the city and its citizens are never out of sight nor mind.