Global Architectural Fascism (GAF): The extreme case of Mvrdv projects in Tirana
Author: Llazar Kumaraku
Affiliation: Polis University
Abstract
When I was asked to write an opinion on the Downtown One building in Tirana designed by MVRDV I hesitated to give it. I hesitated because I remembered a piece of advice from my mom when I was young that always told me "if you can not talk about something well, it is better not to talk". I do not know how much I have followed this advice in my life but but, at least, I try to remember it often. My mom's advice was valuable at the time and I believe it is probably still valid today. Immediately after that, I started thinking about the reasons that lead a person to come out and give such advice. I found the answer to the fact that my mother was born immediately after the Second World War where in Albania the fascist and Nazi regimes had passed and then with a life spent in the communist dictatorship she could not build and could not have a critical spirit towards what surrounded her. This is because the critical spirit was suppressed and always denounced as agitation and propaganda. Immediately after this reasoning I set out to analyze the aspects of Fascism and Nazism that in a certain way formed the main ideologies of the first half of the 20th century and which, together with communism, must have influenced my mother's mentality and a major part of the society that was born in the second half of the last century.
