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Coop Himmelb(l)au's Deconstructivist Group Forms in Albania

Designed by Wolf Prix, Hon. FAIA, of <a href='http://www.coop-himmelblau.at/'>Coop Himmelb(l)au</a>, Albania’s new parliamentary complex in Tirana will be a bracingly contemporary addition to the city’s skyline. The Vienna-based firm’s Deconstructivist stylings are on full display, with an assemblage of wildly differing forms and materials, arranged on top of a publically accessible, landscaped plinth. The main parliamentary hall is inside a tall, glass encased cone. Image courtesy of COOP HIMMELB(L)AU.

The celebration of competing political ideologies within a democratic society is communicated through the building’s design concept. Different building elements (cones, distorted rectangles, cubes) are not suppressed, but instead coexist interactively in one building ensemble. Though drawing from a contemporary Deconstructivist palette of forms and material, Prix’s design is somewhat similar to <a href='http://www.aia.org/practicing/AIAB086823'>Fumihiko Maki’s, Hon. FAIA,</a> seminal Modernist investigations into group forms: finely crafted architectural spaces that are created not from a singular building element on its own, but from the interactions and relationships between various elements. Image courtesy of COOP HIMMELB(L)AU.

A grand public stair leads visitors up to the building’s landscaped plinth and it’s main entrance in a large, opque cone, which acts as a visial counterpoint to the transparent parlimentary hall cone. Image courtesy of COOP HIMMELB(L)AU.

Several sections of the building are covered in a perforated metal skin that will improve its solar and thermal heat exchange, natural ventilation, and noise control. In terms of energy and sustainability, the building will "optimize active and passive energy use," according to Coop Himmelb(l)au. Image courtesy of ISOCHROM.com, Vienna.

Prix calls the glass parlimentary hall volume an architectural metaphor for democratic openess and transparency. Image courtesy of COOP HIMMELB(L)AU.

The transparent parlimentary hall cone will allow visitors to peer in and legislators to look out, somewhat similiar to Foster + Partner’s Reichstag rennovation in Berlin. Image courtesy of COOP HIMMELB(L)AU.

Coop Himmelb(l)au’s Albanian parliment complex draws a few of its forms (and compositional methods) from a recently completed project in Los Angeles, pictured above. Prix’s Central Los Angeles High School #9 uses similar scupltural gestures (cones, cubes, curves) to tie together an urban campus. Image courtesy of Tom Bonner.

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