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Architects Coop Himmelb(l)au of Vienna have won a competition to design a new parliamentary building in Tirana for the Republic of Albania.

The parliamentary hall will be housed in a central glazed cone and members of the public will be able to access the roof of the building plinth to look down into the hall.

The project also includes a cone-shaped entrance hall and block of offices.

More about Coop Himmelb(l)au on Dezeen »

The following details are from Coop Himmelb(l)au:

COOP HIMMELB(L)AU’s winning scheme for ‘The New Parliamentary Complex of the Republic of Albania’ officially confirmed

Wolf D. Prix/ COOP HIMMELB(L)AU presents the new ‘Open Parliament of Albania’ in Tirana which incorporates fundamental democratic values such as openness, transparency and public co-determination. The building, located on a site area with approximately 28,000 m2, is going to be the first project in Albania for the Viennese headquartered studio.

“Our design for the new Parliament in Tirana, Albania, stands for the transparency of democracy”, according to Wolf D. Prix, Design Principal and CEO of COOP HIMMELB(L)AU.

Architectural Concept

As the future political center of the Albanian Republic, the Open Parliament of Albania creates an outstanding architectural landmark in one of the main parts of Tirana’s urban fabric. Situated along the compositional axis of the city, it is located in vicinity to the major governmental institutions.

The design for the Open Parliament of Albania relies on three main ideas:

• To provide a strong urban statement in this exposed part of Tirana’s urban fabric;
• To assemble the different functions in one building ensemble that is compact enough to create a public forum and a park on the southern part of the site;
• To create a unique building for the most important public institution of the Albanian Republic with a contemporary architectural approach shaped to optimize active and passive energy use.

The design incorporates fundamental democratic values such as openness, transparency and public co-determination. The simultaneity of competing political concepts within a democratic society is translated into the design concept: Different building elements are not opposed, but coexist in one building ensemble with a contemporary aesthetic that allows visualizing new functions and meanings.

The core of the building complex is the parliamentary hall that is situated in a glazed cone and stands for the transparency of the legislation. A public stair leads from the public forum to the landscaped roof of the plinth building that unites all the different building elements of our design: Office block, entrance structure and parliamentary hall. From the plinth the public is able to look into the parliamentary hall even from the outside.

The main entrance is designed as a massive cone, which creates an impressive space and acts as the counterpart to the glazed parliamentary hall.

Energy Concept

The new parliamentary building for the Republic of Albania is designed to capture the natural resources and energy flows of its surroundings and employ them to provide optimal environmental conditions for its occupants. The special configuration of the building form and the optimization of the building envelope together with the use of renewable energy sources ensure an energy efficient design and reduce reliance on fossil fuel energy sources. The office building is covered with a second skin made of perforated steel that is specially configured to improve building performance related to optimum daylight use, views, solar control, glare protection, thermal insulation, natural ventilation and noise protection.

See also:

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Town Town by Coop Himmelb(l)au	Pavilion MINI Opera Space by Coop Himmelb(l)au	Art Museum Strongoli by Coop Himmelb(l)au

Slate‘s resident architecture critic Witold Rybczynski seems to be channeling a bit of his inner Andy Rooney this week with his piece, “Think Before You Build,” which asks if computers have made architects “less disciplined.” He doesn’t go so far as to say yes, nor does he discredit the very valuable help the machines lend to the profession, if just to avoid all the tedium that came before it. But he, as you likely will as well, recognizes that some of that tedium is necessary to get an architect thinking more deeply about a project, something that instantly-multiple iterations made through super 1s and 0s doesn’t always allow for. And that thinking,as he tells it, has apparently begun reaching out into architecture schools, who have “taken steps to remedy, or at least mitigate, the situation” via classes in sketching by hand and generally doing things the old fashion way so that students recognize the root of their labors. That’s something, of course, that comes with most design programs, with youngsters still using worn letter-presses and the like, before they’re headed back into Illustrator and Photoshop. Nice to learn that budding architects are getting the same treatment. Here’s a great quote Rybczynski includes from Renzo Piano:

But architecture is about thinking. It’s about slowness in some way. You need time. The bad thing about computers is that they make everything run very fast, so fast that you can have a baby in nine weeks instead of nine months. But you still need nine months, not nine weeks, to make a baby.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

PJ Tierney est un designer basé en Irlande qui a crée à l’occasion de la nouvelle saison de Formule 1, une série de 19 posters représentants les 19 circuits de l’année. Fan de F1, il est arrivé en 19 jours à produire une série de visuels de qualité présentée dans la suite.

Previously on Fubiz

• Stephen King Poster Series
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• Music Philosophy

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This week marked another push to get a National Women’s History Museum built within the hallowed confines of the National Mall. Attempted three times over the last six years, the organization had received the support of Representative Carolyn Maloney from New York and Senator Susan Collins from Maine to introduce a bill to give the museum permission to purchase a federally-owned plot of land at 12th and Independence Avenue in Washington, but as it made its way successfully through the House, it was stalled last year in Senate when a hold was placed on it by two senators, Jim DeMint from South Carolina and Tom Coburn from Oklahoma. If this week’s efforts, which included a rally on Wednesday afternoon, manage to get the hold removed, the plans will move forward. However, as the Washington City Paper reports, the trick then will be figuring out how much the land costs and how much they can afford to buy. Here’s a copy of the stalled bill, S.2129 (pdf) and for some background on the ongoing efforts, here’s from the Journal Gazette and here’s a piece about it from Sheri Caplan at Forbes.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.