Deep Purple in Tirana

This has nothing to do with Interior Design. While still in High School during 1987-88, it was impossible to even find an original audio tape with their album in Tirana. Usually, we would record from any foreign Radio or TV shows (forget about copyrights, it was illegal anyway) and then listen to songs like Smoke on the water, while getting together in various underground (nothing explicitly political) events. Old and new songs, they represented what was best out there. It would have never crossed our minds that any of these groups, would be allowed to have one day, Tirana in their tour agenda.

The Building as Canvas

This is an argument that has been consumed in several blogs. The last time it was on Stepping Stones, The Colours of Tirana and the Crazy buildings of Tirana from where I’ve got the photograph.
I was further investigating the case and I came along the article “The Building as Canvas” by Stephen Zacks on Metropolis magazine about Bolles + Wilson, the firm who is the author of this work.

This is an excerpt from the article

We got a brief that included four photographs of the facade, says Peter Wilson, a partner in the Münster-based office. Rather than inventing a pattern, I wanted to work with what was there. The thing one saw straightaway was that there were about fifty air conditioners on the building, so any color scheme would be contradicted unless we made them the theme.

Even though I had argued before about the fact of having an artwork represented in a reality like in the case of the facades of the Tirana buildings as inappropriate, I have to admit, I was totally amazed by the fact that the pattern created by the authors, incorporates all these alien objects attached to the building, in such a wonderful way. It blends changes in time, the good and not so good ones, of these buildings.