Twenty years ago, in Albania, neighbours were closer than relatives. People lived in open homes. They had their morning coffees together, they would lend and borrow extra chairs for special dinners, they would share their telephones or televisions, they would come together for endless hours of play and entertainment, they would trust each-other with their house keys!

The traditional Albanian home was centered around one room – the living room (dhoma e pritjes), used to share time with people who were not family members. This included visitors of all sorts, but most often (almost everyday) – it was neighbours. The heart and hearth of the old private house, was later brought into the modern apartment buildings (created to live together but apart), where families sacrificed a bedroom just to have a presentable space dedicated to socializing with others. 

The Albanian Pavilion digs into the past to address the future: why knowing our neighbors is not the default? Why don’t we live in open homes anymore? What is the role of architecture in fostering neighborliness? Through contributions of experts in urban planning, architectural design, sociology, urban anthropology, philosophy and journalism, this project attempts to answer these questions in an effort to view architecture as an integral cog in encouraging or discouraging togetherness for neighbors.

As a result, driven by the conviction that the quality of our future life together depends first and foremost on our collective consciousness, the  pavilion attempts to symbolically bring to attention what or who might lie beyond our apartment’s walls.

The Albanian Pavilion is an invitation to cross these barriers and discover the gift, a connection that fulfills our need to belong and makes a place out of our address, transforming our building, our neighborhood and even our city into something much more meaningful.