Tthe IABR (3rd Inter­na­tional Archi­tec­ture Bien­nale Rot­ter­dam) opened it’s doors for the public on Friday. The open­ing event in OMA’s Kun­sthal listed Herman Herzberger, Edi Rama (mayor of Tirana) and Ivo Opstel­ten (mayor of Rot­ter­dam) among others as speakers.

The audi­ence con­sisted almost exclu­sively of archi­tec­ture pro­fes­sion­als, and the opti­mistic words of the speak­ers about the impor­tance of the urban plan­ner and archi­tect in our soci­ety found an easy target. Despite this year’stheme, ‘Power’ is appar­ently less easy to talk about than Social Con­scious­ness or Optimism.

After some words of Herzberger on Le Cor­busier (fea­tured in an exhi­bi­tion at the Nai right now) Edi Rama, the mayor of Tirana held the most inter­est­ing speech of the day. He described the trans­for­ma­tion of Tirana in the advent of cap­i­tal­ism. Tirana went from 1000 cars (in 1999) to 125.000 cars in 5 years, from no com­mer­cial space at all to sudden pro­lif­er­a­tion of little barber shops everywhere.

Rama explained how he asked him­self how to deal with this new con­di­tion need­ing urban devel­op­ment, having no budget at all. The cheap­est solu­tion was to paint, and see how people would react (pic­tures).

And when we painted the first build­ing – purple, and orange – I received a call: there are hun­dreds of people on the street, it is a traf­fic chaos. And every­body started to talk about colors – it was the first time that people debated about some­thing which was there, instead of debat­ing what the quick­est way out of the coun­try is.

Read a text about Tiranas city trans­for­ma­tion bei Edi Rama him­self after the break. The ques­tion remains what the next steps have been after this col­or­ful incep­tion – we did not hear about more sus­tain­able urban devel­op­ment hap­pen­ing now.

More about the Bien­nale coming up, in the mean­time check our pic­tures of the Bien­nale at the photo page.

When look­ing up the word "innovation" in the ency­clopae­dia Bri­tan­nica, I found the fol­low­ing interpretation:

Inno­va­tion: a) the intro­duc­tion of some­thing new; b) a new idea, method or device.

A little bit fur­ther down a com­ment attracted my atten­tion. A hyper­linked phrase: “innovation – effect on social change”, was explained as follows:

Some social changes result from the inno­va­tions that are adopted in a soci­ety. These can include tech­no­log­i­cal inven­tions, new sci­en­tific knowl­edge, new beliefs, or a new fash­ion in the sphere of leisure. Dif­fu­sion is not auto­matic but selec­tive; an inno­va­tion is adopted only by people who are moti­vated to do so.

Around the year 2000, some scaf­fold­ing appeared on the facade of a living block in Rruga e Dur­re­sit in Tirana. A ren­o­va­tion process had ear­lier involved sev­eral gov­ern­men­tal build­ings in the centre of the city, all of archi­tec­tural value rep­re­sent­ing a land­mark of ratio­nal archi­tec­ture in Tirana. All build­ings were built by Ital­ian archi­tects in the 30's but their facades had degraded after long years of for­get­ful­ness or spo­radic ren­no­va­tion of a "free style", totally dis­con­nected to the orig­i­nal colours of the build­ings. How­ever, the rest of the city was still the dull grey of blighted com­mu­nist archi­tec­ture, mortar falling apart, win­dows and bal­conies changed as people liked and could.

A couple of weeks later, when the scaf­fold­ing was removed, some strong, blithe­ful colours painted in square shapes and dif­fer­ent forms, were revealed.

This was the first build­ing painted by Edi Rama, the newly elected mayor of Tirana, and it marked the begin­ning of his project to trans­forml the ruined facades of the city into fas­ci­nat­ing paint­ings. In the fol­low­ing days more scaf­fold­ing appeared and more squares or colours cov­ered other facades of that street. In the months to come, all the streets of the city centre were one by one cov­ered by scaf­fold­ing and then reap­pear­ing with new, sparkling colours. Along­side with the paint­ing, at the cross­road at Rruga e Dur­re­sit, the first street lights were installed, caus­ing an unusual sen­sa­tion during the first nights, as no part of the city had never before been fully lit.

On other sides of the city there was an immense amount of rub­bish being accu­mulated, as numer­ous ille­gal kiosks and bar­racks that had invaded all the green areas of the city centre (includ­ing the main park and the river­sides) were being torn down. The remains of this infor­mal city, a safe heaven for infor­mal­ity, shady busi­nesses and drug deal­ers, was step by step being replaced by a green carpet, making the city brighter and more attractive.

Howeyer, let me go back to my ini­tial point. As one can see from the dic­tio­nary, inno­va­tionis under­stood as intro­duc­tion of some­thing new, a new idea or method. Here one can wonder what is new (read inno­v­a­tive) with making a public garden, or fixing street lights, or even with paint­ing a facade?

Well, it is here that one can get help of the larger def­i­n­i­tion of the word inno­va­tion - seen as a social change: "Some social changes result from the inno­va­tions that are adopted in a soci­ety, "

When asking how the paint­ing of facades can bring social changes, one must step out of the aes­thetic realm of colours and forms and remem­ber that one of the main prob­lems of post com­mu­nist Alban­ian soci­ety was the loss of col­lec­tive respon­si­bil­ity towards a shared public space/domain. Pri­vate prop­erty used to rule; every­one had become very indi­vid­u­al­is­tic and refused to take respon­si­bil­ity for what­ever existed out­side the doorstep of their house. They would go as far as chang­ing every­thing they could inside their old houses, with­out both­er­ing at all about how it would affect the out­side. This exam­ple also reflects the atti­tude towards public space, which was regarded as a space tor pure per­sonal profits.

As soon as the first colour­ful com­po­si­tions had been painted on the facades, people started to react. Some didn't like what was hap­pen­ing, some enjoyed it very much, but most felt unsure and started to talk and dis­cuss the phe­nom­ena. For the first time there was a sense of a shared public space, and the feel­ing of col­lec­tive respon­si­bil­ity crept out from the his­tor­i­cal abyss "here Alba­ni­ans had con­demned it. Besides paint­ing the facades, side­walks were being repaired, lights were being put up, and the amount of geen­ery was increased. Instead of only men in leather jack­ets smok­ing slim cig­a­rettes, women and chil­dren, old people and young cou­ples slowly started to reclaim the space that ear­lier had been socially denied to them. The sun seemed to shine dif­fer­ently from the reflec­tion on colours and fresh green grass. Tirana started to change.

Mir­ror­ing the Change

Alban­ian organ­ised crime has become a point a/reference for all crim­i­nal activ­ity. Every­thing passes via the Alba­ni­ans. The road for drugs arms and people -meaning ille­gal immi­grants des­tined for Europe – is in Alban­ian hands." (Cat­taldo Motta, Ital­ian public pros­e­cu­tor, 2000)

When the world's media shipped out in 1999, Tirana looked like a huge sink estate with some self-​important gov­ern­ment build­ings in it … Tirana now looks like it has been assem­bled from giant Liquorice All­sorts. This fresh coat is the work of Tirana's mayor and prin­ci­pal topic of con­ver­sa­tion … There is a pal­pa­ble sense of the rise of a gen­er­a­tion that sees what needs to be done as more chal­leng­ing than the swim to Italy … Alba­nia dind't join the 20th cen­tury until 1990. By 1997, it had col­lapsed into anar­chy. Six years later, Tirana is the kind o/place where simple people want to raise their chil­dren … I fly home con­tem­plat­ing some­thing which, five days pre­vi­ously would have struck me as utterly ris­i­ble. One day, I'm going back to Albaija. Of my own accord. On hol­i­day … (Andrew Mueller, the Guardian)

Is there a need to com­ment on these two dif­fer­ent quotes, writ­ten only 3 years ago apart from each other? Not longer than a few years ago. Alba­nia was still iden­ti­fied with a coun­try of anar­chy, thieves, pros­ti­tutes and civil war. Only at the begin­ning of the second man­date of Rama as mayor of Tirana. more and more jour­nal­ists started to visit the coun­try, first attracted by and then fas­ci­nated with the facade paint­ing project No need to say that the sort of "filter" inter­na­tional media uses to rep­re­sent dif­fer­ent real­i­ties was taken away from the scru­ti­niz­ing binoc­u­lars of the jour­nal­ists. The paint­ing and the green­ery was by now func­tion­ing not only to fas­ci­nate the curi­ous west­ern eyes, but as the quote from the Guardian shows, it was help­ing the VIs­i­tor to see the real­ity through the eyes of Alba­ni­ans. After all, this was not merely an aes­thetic ges­ture, a nice painterly act. It was at the same time a pure polit­i­cal act, a ges­ture of depar­ture with the past, a ges­ture of hope, a reflec­tion of the ener­getic drive of a coun­try striv­ing towards the future. At the same time, jobs ,were being cre­ated, more public works being real­ized, streets were being enlarged and repaved and lights were slowly enter­ing all the dark cor­ners of the city. The project mate­ri­al­ized the eco­nomic growth of the coun­try. For­got­ten group ages, as the elders and chil­dren, were increas­ingly find­ing more and more public space to inhabit. Afier the inutial scep­ti­cism, not only cit­i­zens. but also busi­nesses along the painted facades agreed to con­tribute finan­cially to the repaving and improve­ment of the shared intrastruc­ture of the city.

Where light lit the streets, shad­ows with­drew, and Tirana became a safer city to walk through at any our of day and night People started to feel more secure and less scep­ti­cal about paying taxes (very unac­cept­able untill the late 90s), because they felt their money was well invested. The Town Hall man­aged to raise the tax rev­enue in 2005, six times com­pared to year 2000 and as a con­se­quence, increase the number of invest­ments in public devel­op­ment projects. Also, the number of busi­nesses was increased by three times during the period 2000-2005.

Some social changes result from the inno­va­tions that are adopted in a soci­ety … Dif­fil­sion is not auto­matic but selec­tive; an inno­va­tion is adopted only by people who are moti­vated to do so.

Topos and Tirana Bien­nale

The key point is how colours, amongst other things, are help­ing to change the con­tact between the people and the city; how you can change a city in which people are con­demned to live by des­tiny into a city of choice. (from Anri Sala's inter­view with Hans Obrist in the cat­a­logue of Tirana Bien­nale 2).

Along­side the eco­nomic growth, the paint­ing of facades and the enlarge­ment of green areas in the city, Tirana had started to get more and more involved in con­temporary art. In 2003, the second edi­tion of the Tirana Bien­nale was held in the city, rep­re­sent­ing works by more than 120 artists from all over the world and col­lab­o­rat­ing with a number of inter­na­tional cura­tors. It was inevitable that the painted city would catch the atten­tion of the invited col­lab­o­ra­tors. Thus, an entire sec­tion of the Bien­nial, curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and the Alban­ian artist Anri Sala, was ded­i­cated to the con­tin­u­a­tion of the facade treat­ment project.

Inspired by the drive of change that the project had proven, the two cura­tors de­cided to take it out of Rama's hands and give it over to a number of inter­na­tion­ally estab­lished artists, whose artis­tic prac­tices express ambi­tions for social change pre­cisely through the con­struc­tion of visual or envi­ron­men­tal experience.

As artist Carsten Holler pointed out:

The polit­i­cal impact of this project lies in the visu­al­iza­tion of signs of change … thereby induc­ing trans­for­ma­tion, the social milieu changes as a result of the 'colourification'. The sign alone can be trig­ger enough.

As a result of the project, inter­na­tional artists turned whole living blocks in cen­tral Tirana into unique works of con­tem­po­rary art. This turn of the project attracted an immense amount of atten­tion trom the inter­na­tional art scene. And it attracted an ever grow­ing number of local artists too that started to react and make works influ­enced by or com­ment­ing on the social phe­nom­ena caused by the colours.

And there's more. The city is now open to taking the project even one step fur­ther ahead. A larger number of both Alban­ian and inter­na­tional artists will be invited to turn blocks of build­ings into art works. New ways of involv­ing and work­ing together with the dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties are being prepared.

Tirana is an open source to con­tem­po­rary art, offer­ing an unprece­dented interac­tion between artists and public, attract­ing an ever grow­ing number of vis­i­tors and tourists. As the city con­tin­ues its strive on the way towards the future, the spec­ta­cle of colours, already turned into a polit­i­cal invest­ment for devel­op­ment, unfolds every­day and lies in wait for its continuation.

Back to the Near Future
Is it or is it not worth (read inno­v­a­tive) to rein­vent the wheel after all? Well, after having expe­ri­enced what social changes colours can cause, what improve­ment of life qual­ity the increased green­ery brings, and how hope and secu­rity is restored by repared and newly lit roads, I think YES rein­vent­ing the wheel CAN BE an inno­va­tion, a pure intro­duc­tion of new ideas and meth­ods that causes sig­nif­i­cant social changes, and this, must be continued!

(Text: Edi Rama, from the IABR blog)