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altavil 1

January 2015
May 2017
Tirana
Albania
National Museum
800 mq
Albanian Government-Ministry of Culture
Daniele Ledda xycomm Milan
IArch. Paola Frigerio, Arch. Mike Dolinski and Yiwei He

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extra :photo construction
HOUSE OF LEAVES
Albanian National Museum of Secret Surveillance

Until a few years ago, this unremarkable house in the middle of Tirana, Albania, served as the headquarters of the Sigurimi, the secret service agency, operating throughout the long dictatorship of Enver Hoxha. Its location was crucial in the geopolitics of the city, for it had the “normal” appearance of a private villa.
The project of transforming the House of Leaves into a National Museum of Secret
Surveillance was initiated by the Albanian Ministry of Culture in 2014 and supported by a multidisciplinary team of historians, associations of victims, engineers and craftsmen from different countries.
One among a number of historic locations that the government wishes to bring back into public consciousness, the House of Leaves is already an iconic creature formed by a half-forgotten past and a wide-open future.
The transformation of this “House” into a site of memory required delicate interventions. The derelict condition of the house is itself an integral part of its character, a kind of historic tattoo, a deeply etched condition no one can quite comprehend today.
The most telling aspect of the House, from the current point-of-view, is its multi-layered condition. Whether from the sidewalk or from its interior, the building reveals barriers and divisions, demarcations and thresholds of different vintage and purpose, all of which transform it into a strangely hollow and subtly shrouded object. Simply by the act of opening the Museum and its premises to the public, the half-forgotten, half-feared conditions of the past are peeled away, leaving one to reckon with a disconcerting present.

 

 

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