New Projekt, for the Marine Base: "Porto Palermo" in Albania

Festarch 2011
Albania: Rewinding the memory reel

Inviato da abitare

Text by Anna Foppiano
Video by Maria da Schio
“The paradox is complete: military zones, especially those along the Albanian coastline, punctuated by disturbing structures, have saved some of the most undisturbed landscapes from savage speculative overbuilding.” Elisabetta Terragni, Festarch, 5 June 2011
Albania. In a maybe unexpected and far (even though quite near to us) landscape, Elisabetta Terragni and Jeffrey Schnapp, this time in team with Daniele Ledda, managed to turn back working on a particular typological variant of the museal places, analogous with the one they successfully realized in Trento some years ago: the tunnel as exhibition space.
Because of its recent history, the issue of the reuse of the discarded infrastructures is in Albania a matter of the greatest importance, powerful and fertile ground for projects, considering the impressive physical impact of the military defence system created with obsessive systematicity in the 1960′s and 1970′s. A uniform fabric of pillboxes and tunnels covering as a “thick and vague cobweb” all the national territory (Abitare dealt with this subject last year publishing a research on the Concrete Mushrooms).
The underwater base for submarines (a 650 metres long, 12 metres high tunnel, for 4 Whiskeys, 90 metres each) cutting a strip of land in Porto Palermo, or more exactly in the Panorma Bay, is undoubtedly an exceptional site, between water and sky, to consider, document and transmit the events of the Cold War.
For her lecture at Festarch, Elisabetta Terragni started from Ismail Kadare (Argirocastro, 1936) and from his Palace of dreams (1981), a place that everybody knew, but nobody approached. Abitare will try to near, to closely watch these spaces and their transformation, by following the project in the next months. For the moment, here is a short interview to Elisabetta Terragni to better know what is the project about, and some initial suggestions of the imagined museum, taking shape within the reinforced concrete vault of the tunnel, and result of a no way easy, but nevertheless exhaustive and wilfull archival research.

Panorama of the Cold War / Gjiri i Panormes Working with Elisabetta Terragni of Studio Terragni Architetti in Como, metaLAB founders Jeffrey Schnapp and Daniele Ledda have developed concept designs for the conversion of the former submarine base in Gjiri i Panormes, Albania, into a multimedia Cold War museum. Gjiri i Panormes is located on an unspoiled section of the Adriatic coastline and was the site of one of the Popular Republic of Albania’s most important defense facilities. The bay has a history dating back to antiquity, with archeological remains confirming its role as a significant place of maritime trade. It is also the site of the Ali Pasha fortress from the Ottoman era. The project divides the visitor experience of this once secret site up into seven immersive environments that are imagined as if the acts in a play. Acts 1 and 6 serve as transitions between the landscape of Porto Palermo and the underground world of the base. Acts 2-5 lead the visitor through missile storage facilities, down the 2 km tunnel/canal to a Soviet-built Whiskey class submarine, and then back down the tunnel on glass-bottomed rafts that conclude the visit with an outdoor excursion around the bay.

Kommentar: Pläne gab es schon viele für die Bucht von Palermo, inklusive Versuche der Albanischen Mafia, dort Spiel Casinos zu etablieren, illegale Grundstücks Verkäufe durch die Land Mafia in Tirana. Baugenehmigungen und Projekt Genehmigungen gibt es nicht. Selbst Rogner plante schon in 1996 dort Projekte, welche nie weiterkamen, aus vielen Gründen.


Tuneli i Porto Palermos: Një muze i Luftës së Ftohtë < 2011-07-11

Oliverta Lila

 

Porto Palermo Castle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porto_Palermo_Castle