Concrete Mushrooms. Reusing Albania's 750,000 Abandoned Bunkers.
Elian Stefa and Gyler Mydyti

The Concrete Mushrooms Project is an initiative started by Elian Stefa and Gyler Mydyti. The research project studies the history of Albania, focused in the reason of building the bunkers all over the country [More than 750.000 Albanian bunkers were built during Hoxha regime to prevent possible external invasions], how the people of Albania nowadays coexists with them, how and why do they use them.

This book does not aim to defend or protect all of our inherited bunkers. Instead it brings a new point of view. Its aims are firstly, as a conceptual proposal, to create a debate on the role that the bunkers have had and still have; and secondly, as a practical manual for reuse, providing models illustrated by details, and a shopping list with expenditures. For example, the proposed transformation of a triple bunker would cost about 150 euros. In this way, this book comes as an invitation to expand the frontiers of freedom. It does not state that in today’s civilization there is nothing ugly, evil, bloody, dangerous to both the destinies of the global and the individual; but it suggests that man has the power, through the grotesque and the absurd drama of the past, to cultivate a sense of humor and ease a wounded memory.

Title: Concrete Mushrooms. Reusing Albania's 750,000 Abandoned Bunkers.
Authors: Elian Stefa and Gyler Mydyti
Contributors: Niku Alex Mucaj, Alicja Dobrucka, Olia Miho, Vera Sacchetti, Bunkerfest.
ISBN: 978-84-615-9870-0
Size: 16,50 x 25 cms.
Date: August 2012
cc: This book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Publisher: dpr-barcelona