The Albanian Files. Freedom and Architecture

Albania is a young democracy, home to nearly three million people. The country sits at the heart of the Mediterranean; its geographic location has long shaped the country’s cultural exchanges and built environment. Three decades after the collapse of the communist regime, Albania remains in transition – culturally, socially and architecturally. This ongoing renewal has placed architecture at the center of national discourse and created a specific opportunity for architects. “The Albanian Files” focuses on that transformation.

This book brings together sixty international offices currently working in Albania, some of which have been active in the country since the early 2000s. Each office submitted a contribution with reflections on their experiences in Albania and on architecture built and proposed.

Anneke Abhelakh is an independent curator, writer and researcher, exploring how history, culture, society and architecture are interconnect and taking architecture as a lens to understand relationships, everyday life and collective imagination. She rose from assistant curator to chief curator at the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi) and co-founded the Studio for Unsolicited Architecture. At ETH Zurich she taught Exhibiting Architecture and coordinated the 2019 D‑ARCH self-evaluation report. At Dropcity Milan she launched “On Public Agency” (2023) and “Architecting the Future” (2024). She was the first artistic director of Zentrum Architektur Zürich and curated the Albanian Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale.