Developed is response to Albania’s devastating November 2019 earthquake - which left 51 dead, 3,000 hospitalized, and 32,000 homeless - ZA worked with the National Territorial Planning Agency of Albania, the Albanian Development Fund, and the Office of the Prime Minister Edi Rama to design a 1,200-resident, 24 acre postdisaster masterplan featuring a combined 200,000sf of residential, educational, institutional, commercial, and community-based programs. 15 multi-family buildings flow along the western edge of the site, providing homes to 93 displaced families on formerly agricultural land. These buildings are radically thin in section; single-loaded corridors provide access a mix of one, two, and three bedroom units. Every room in these units is the full width of the building, bathed in light from two sides and naturally cross-ventilated by Albania’s mild air. Each unit has a 300sf terrace, open on two sides to the surrounding environment, providing residents with the psycho-social benefits of indoor/outdoor Mediterranean living. The multi-family buildings wiggle and bends in concert with strategically positioned trees to provide an experience of living in the canopy. The ground floor of these multi-family buildings are left open to evolve in a flexible way as the community grows and self-organizes patterns of social exchange and ritual. These activities will unfold along a horizontal ground plane, a visually continuous pastoral datum navigated by paths linking landscape events such as gardens, plazas, and recreational fields. East of the multi-family strip, an intimate 120-house neighborhood consisting of one, two, and three bedroom homes extends towards the horizon along “green fingers,” linear parks which weave together wild nature, cultivated landscapes, pavilions, kindergartens, and nurseries.

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