Qyteti Studenti, Tirana. Weak Legacy as a Trigger

This study aims to make the Tirana opaqueness visible, by exploring the intersection between some of the many material and immaterial factors entangled in its space, using the concept of weak legacy as a lens to identify an active matrix for alternative design strategies. Therefore, legacy is not intended here as a value of physical objects per se, nor as something to be safeguarded for intrinsic value, but rather as a form of interplay between tangible and intangible dispositions; it is a vision that seeks to go beyond a mere inventory and capitalisation meaning, towards an “extension of domain” . The word ‘weak’, instead, is an attempt to articulate the concept on a particular basis, referring to the marginalisation of the public sphere and to the lowering of the social and spatial agency. In this sense, governance strategies adopted to attain a more relevant international status seem to depoliticize the urban transformation, with a constant decline of social capital, as it often happens in the absence of adequate welfare and reformist systems . Thus, in a place where financial and economic processes seem to be conceived as an inevitable fact rather than a negotiable socio-technical construct, the space is becoming increasingly unstable. Then, what can the weak legacy as a lens allow us to grasp? Rather than starting from a clear question, here we let the observation of a particular space suggest which elements to focus on, reversing the approach underlying the current urbanisation. The work can therefore be considered as an in-depth analysis of a specific urban sample which, apart from the analytical goal, aims to reveal implicit potential for further transformation.