REPUBLISHED

“Bread & Heart”, inside Edi Rama’s glass house

Erblin Vukaj · Originally published: 3 June 2026

The festival and its chosen venues

On 3 June, as thousands of Albanian citizens and activists on “Dëshmorët e Kombit” Boulevard protest for the fourth time against handing over the protected area of Zvërnec for tourist resorts, the second edition of the “Bread & Heart” architecture festival will open on the first floor of the Prime Minister’s Office.

Two sides of Albania will face each other just a few metres apart: one will cry out for the landscape being lost, the other will celebrate the landscape being designed.

One will demand accountability for how the territory is being developed; the other will praise the hand that has provided these opportunities.

This is more than a coincidence of timing. It is perhaps the clearest picture of Albania in 2026, of the divisions created by the government’s approach.

After the Gaetano Pesce exhibition at the Center for Openness and Dialogue (COD), participants will move to Villa No. Red (the Red Villa/Government Villa No. 5) in Sauk for a private party.

The next day, activities will continue at “Book Building”, with a programme somewhat more open to the public, albeit ticketed, while the architecture festival itself will close at “Kengo Art Park” in Petrelë on 5 June.

But each of these venues chosen for the festival has a story of its own.

COD symbolises the transformation of the Prime Minister’s Office from a seat of power, or an administrative institution, into an exhibition space.

We need only remember that press conferences with journalists after cabinet meetings are held outside, in the side lane beside the Prime Minister’s Office, to understand how well, and for what purpose, the spaces in this building are actually used.

“Villa No. Red” symbolises an architectural whim of a power that operates out of public view. Through a series of questionable procedures previously reported by Citizens.al, and at a cost of more than 6 million euros, this government villa became the headquarters of an entity that remains opaque to this day: the “Bread & Heart” Foundation.

“Book Building” represents one of the most aggressive urban interventions in the heart of Tirana, one that remains unfinished today, a year after the festival’s first edition.

“Kengo Art Park” remains a project wrapped in uncertainty, renderings and unfulfilled promises. It began as an art park called “Tirana Art Garden” that would “revitalise” a former military base as a cultural destination, but despite the 3.5 million euros, it is still unfinished: work is expected to be completed in September 2026.

Yet when these projects are placed together in a programme of events, they tell a larger story: that of a system in which architecture is no longer presented as a public process, but as a spectacle seemingly intended to project the Prime Minister’s role in this development even more forcefully.

Architecture and the image of power

In a democracy, architecture is a matter of debate. In Albania, however, it is increasingly presented as a performance with a single protagonist: Prime Minister Edi Rama.

In the past two decades, perhaps no politician in Europe has tied his political identity to architecture as closely as Rama has.

Towers, squares, international competitions, festivals, exhibitions, biennials, books, public presentations and narratives of urban development have gradually been built into the same portrait of him.

A portrait in which the city is presented as the product of the leader’s vision rather than of institutional processes. In this sense, “Bread & Heart” is no longer simply an architecture festival.

It is a kind of cultural manifestation of Prime Minister Edi Rama’s model of government, one in which the boundaries between the state, politics, culture and personal promotion have become increasingly blurred.

Transparency and academic participation

The paradox begins precisely where the festival claims to promote dialogue.

For more than a year, requests for information addressed to the Territorial Development Agency, the National Territorial Planning Agency and the Directorate of Government Services have produced dozens of pages of justifications, but almost no documents.

Since June 2025, Citizens.al has requested the agreements between institutions and agencies for staging this festival, but the requests have been refused.

We have asked about the funds used. We have not been told.

We have requested the contracts, the private entities involved and how they were selected. We have not been given them.

Instead of transparency through documents and official accounts, we have been offered “institutional marketing” for the festival. This is perhaps the greatest irony of “Bread & Heart”.

A festival claiming to promote open dialogue has been accompanied by one of the most closed processes of institutional communication imaginable.

The absence of academia from this event is equally telling.

The Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning (FAU) at the University of Tirana has confirmed to Citizens.al that it has received no official invitation to participate in the festival’s second edition either.

This fact may seem secondary, but it is actually fundamental, because it shows that the festival does not aim to create a debate about architecture.

It aims to create a network, and a network is not the same thing as an academic community.

An academic community asks questions and develops criticism by challenging the model, while a network builds consensus with the aim of creating a relationship, a kind of line of obedience.

In a normal country, an international architecture festival would also have a dedicated place for universities, students, researchers and local professionals.

But here, at Rama’s festival, the opposite happens. Academic institutions remain on the margins, and their place is taken by two government agencies, the Territorial Development Agency (AZHT) and the National Territorial Planning Agency (AKPT).

At the same time, centre stage is shared with international figures, prestigious studios and networks that are visibly drawing ever closer to the Prime Minister’s personal power.

The foundation and the public interest

It is no coincidence that this process is taking place alongside the festival’s transformation into the “Bread & Heart Foundation”. Nor is it a coincidence that this foundation’s headquarters should be linked to “Villa No. Red”.

Likewise, it is no coincidence that institutions have refused since October 2025 to make public the documents relating to this transformation.

In healthy democratic systems, public institutions create events. Under centralised powers with autocratic tendencies, events produce institutions.

This is a major distinction, since it is clear that “Bread & Heart” is not building a public forum on Albanian and international architecture within its spaces.

It is building a system in which urban development, international prestige, political power and private capital meet under the same roof and are led by just one man, to whom the praise and applause are directed.

A kind of parallel republic, a small republic of architects, curators, investors and officials who, detached from reality, speak constantly about the future but rarely answer for the present.

Perhaps the most important question is not how much Rama’s festivals cost, who pays for them or who took part.

The question may be simpler: what public interest and public culture is this investment cultivating?

There is no discussion of sharing decision-making with the public, only invitations, even with steeply priced tickets, to adore the leader’s decision-making.

Architecture, however, is more than a matter of buildings and towers. At its core, it is a matter of power. It shows who decides and who benefits.

In this sense, the story of “Bread & Heart” seems less a story about architecture than about the political system that governs Albania, about how, little by little, public debate has been replaced by public spectacle.

But societies and cities are built not only of concrete, but also of institutions. And when institutions are replaced by spectacle, the same question always remains: are cities being built for citizens, or simply stages for power?