Linear Park

Durrës is the second-largest and oldest city in Albania, located less than an hour’s drive west of Tirana. Today, as Albania charts a course towards economic vibrancy, the municipality of Durrës is seizing the moment to revitalize its urban landscape.

We won a competition to provide a vision for a stormwater runoff canal that was to be covered and transformed into a 1km long park. Durrës still reels from a building boom in the 90s, where most of the city edges were irregularly settled. The absence of urban planning resulted in an acute lack of public, collective spaces. Our proposal focuses therefore strongly on supplying the missing recreational green spaces and providing a place for neighbourhood cohesion.

First, everything became a garden - a lush green linear landscape with forests, enclosures, aromatic patches and orchards. Next, we carved out the necessary access roads to reach existing buildings, but with a strong focus on pedestrians and cyclists. Third, we animated the park by placing playgrounds, gyms, and kiosks. The last step was to connect these places with a quiet pedestrian path, offering a shortcut through the lush vegetation. The restrictive material palette focuses on making everything with local brick, referring to the clay shales on which the city was built and the Romans so virtuosely used.

The park thus becomes a recognisable single gesture characterised by a sequence of functions that give it its meaning. Its sequential Kulissenlandschaft enables both introverted and extroverted spaces, allowing the park to be a reflection of the diverse characters that will enjoy it.