The relief that arises from the consistency of the landscape untouched quality, and the apparent dense physical pattern that the program covers on the site, emerges as the most crucial fact of the design. In this sense, the settlement scheme is treated as a grounding process of mass building that challenges the expectation of the stereotypical verticality. The design proposal deals directly with the three dimensional topographic problem which develops in the axis of landscape apertures and functional relationships as well as with the contextualization the natural qualities of the place. In order for the buildings to collide with the natural texture and even to dissolve into the smooth site, the sections of the masses that sit in the ground contains as much as possible, a natural surface articulation.
Located in the outskirts of Tirana the RVN proposal sits on a hillside stretching along the North-South axis about 1 km away from the old state route Tirana-Durres and approximately 13 km away from the city center. The site has a slope terrain reaching 12 meters of height for 60 meters. The project consists in designing an ensemble made of diverse residential units accompanied with the public spaces and social facilities such as a Cafeteria, a Health Center and a Praying Room to serve the needs of a small community in the outskirts of Tirana.
The request for providing each villette with about 350 m2 called for the optimization of the site and the division into individual plots. The change in the slope of the terrain was deemed for the application of two different typologies. The slope direction towards the east, and the south orientation were the main criteria to decide on the design tools for the general configuration of the village.
From the main road departs a network of internal passages. Many streets and alleys form private courtyards and entrances. All the houses are connected by pedestrian walkways passing through each level.
The Villettes displayed in each segment compose a common courtyard, and are linked to each other through paths. The Village forms courtyards and open spaces with displacement of the villas to the northern part of the plot in order to create southern courtyards as well as open public spaces that dialog with neighborhood. The courtyards were conceived to have a high quality intimate outdoor space as well as connection to the common courtyard spaces for residents. Each house has a straight relation with the courtyards from its most used spaces, the living area and the master bedroom. The arrangement of the rows of the villettes using the eastern directed topography slope, thus leveling the buildings, and the southern direction of the main spaces, allowed to achieve the privacy of the terraced courtyards.
The landscape of the public areas arrangement is fed from the same contextual features. It is aimed to achieve a display that is suited for the genetic pattern of the scheme which is mostly smoothly terraced.
Location: Tirane, Albania
Area: 5301 m2
Year: 2014
Enri Leka