“Mangalem 21” housing estate is located in the eastern part of the capital.

The sloping terrain allows each building to look over the other, creating different views over the surroundings, while 70% of the site remains open to public squares and green spaces.

The project owes its name to the old city center of Albania’s UNESCO World Heritage site Berat – Mangalem, or the ‘Town of a Thousand Windows’.

According to the Dutch studio, it is conceived as a checkerboard pattern of small apartments blocks.

“Its manifest use of color is a reference to the initiative of Tirana’s former mayor Edi Rama to paint the city’s communist-era apartment blocks in the early 2000s”, says the description of the project of the Dutch studio “OMA”.

“Mangalem 21” is expected to be fully in use by the end of 2023.

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