AA alum Vang-Anh Tran, Wing Nga Tam, Zhuo Chen, together with local collaborator and AA alum Bora Malko, organised a workshop in collaboration with Barleti University for the Tirana Architecture Triennale. The workshop was part of the LINA framework, a European Architecture Platform cofunded by Creative EU.

The workshop, entitled NOTHING IS LOST, NOTHING IS CREATED, EVERYTHING IS TRANSFORMED, took place from 7-11 April in Tirana, Albania. The workshop challenged the stigma surrounding reuse by embracing repair and celebrated the act of maintenance as a form of care embedded in urban fabric.

The workshop invited participants to explore the concept of repair and design tools for repair in the city of Tirana. Students took on the roles of repairers, as well as designers, constructing 1:1 mobile repair stations with salvaged, used or waste materials from the university campus. Through experimentation and collaboration, the group established new DIY repair scenarios, developing tools and facilities to form a citywide infrastructure.

Students collectively designed and constructed a glass block shelf that served as a partition and intermediate material store, and a mobile repair cart that transports materials and contains a tool library. The repair cart served as a gathering point when parked in the community. At the end of the workshop, the group took the mobile repair station out for a test ride in the Selitë neighbourhood.

The AA alum send a special thanks to the local carpenter workshop Mobileri Xhamo for their generous support in providing access to their timber workshop facilities and knowledge sharing, and to the local residents in the Selitë neighbourhood for their engagement with the mobile repair station prototype. The Tirana Architecture Triennale is supported and funded by Barleti University and the LINA Framework, in collaboration with local partners including The Albanian Cinematheque.

More information on the LINA Architecture Programme can be found here.