In the pyramid of Tirana, once dedicated to a communist dictator, the hammer blows of the workers resound as they put the finishing touches to the metamorphosis of the place into a technological hub where young people will have the means to forge a future. In a vibrant capital in full mutation, the strange monument has known multiple lives and abandonment. But starting in the fall, teenagers from Tirana will be taking courses there in 3D modelling, programming and even digital design using the latest equipment.
Albania, where wages are low and unemployment high, is experiencing, as elsewhere in the Balkans, the massive exodus of its inhabitants in search of opportunities that they cannot find at home. “What was used to glorify an individual’s past is completely overturned, it becomes a place for educating people, not dedicated to one person but to thousands,” Martin Mata, co-president of the association, told AFP. Albanian-American Development Foundation (AADF), one of the actors of the project.
The revisited pyramid, a 15 million euro project co-financed by the AADF and the Albanian authorities, will house an education center to train young Albanians in all-digital after school, with the hope of attracting 4,000 students per week. “It’s money well placed,” continues Martin Mata. “If in 10 years, we realize that 200,000 children have participated and if 30% of them choose a career thanks to what they have learned, it will be mission accomplished”.
The monument in the heart of Tirana had several lives before being transformed by the Dutch architectural firms MVRDV and Albanian iRI into a huge all-white structure, on which tourists and curious people climb while waiting for the opening of the fine interior space september.
The brutalist behemoth rose from the ground as a museum in memory of Enver Hoxha a few years after his death in 1985. Inside the lead gray monument, enthroned a huge statue of the paranoid dictator who reigned for four decades over the hermetically sealed country. . After the fall of communism in 1991, the museum closed its doors. Then, it housed NATO offices, cafes, a nightclub, a television studio… A theater project had failed for lack of funds and the pyramid had been abandoned by everyone for many years, at the Except for the adventurers who climbed its walls for the breathtaking view of Tirana.
Today, the revamped pyramid, with large windows that let in light, still allows people to climb to the top but in a safer way, via stairs. “We didn’t want to renovate the pyramid identically,” underlines Gent Agolli, architect at iRi. “Our ambition was to open it to the public, to make it the pyramid of the people both outside and inside,” he told AFP.
In fact, digital education classes started in 2020 years in the black and red tower of the national football stadium complex in Tirana. This digital education program called Tumo, also tested in cities such as Yerevan, Paris, Beirut or Berlin, has so far welcomed a thousand young people per week. “All the knowledge acquired here will be useful to them now but especially in the future, whatever profession they will exercise in the future,” Shqipe Berisha, 41, director of Tumo Tirana, told AFP.
In September, teenagers, their coaches and professional speakers will all be housed in the pyramid. The 12,000 square meter structure also has around fifty multicolored cubes inside and outside which will be rented to companies in the sector, bars and other cafeterias. Proceeds will be used to subsidize Tumo Tirana to make the courses as accessible as possible for Albanian families.
In the eyes of Shqipe Berisha, the place fits perfectly with the turbulent past of Albania. “It’s like a mirror, our parents tried to explain the regime, in my time we were sliding on the slopes, after the pyramid was in pieces because Albania was in pieces. Now it is open and reflects the openness of the country”. Amina Xhembulla, 15, is learning graphic design. “It’s a great way to keep busy,” she says. “We use technologies that we don’t have at school”. As she is asked for her opinion on the dark hours of the pyramid, she shrugs her shoulders and turns back to her giant screen: “I don’t know much about history”.
