The city requires delicate, flexible, and smart ideas, puncture-like interventions which answer the inhabitants needs. The project Design and Heritage Empowers Communities aimed to take on this challenge by seeking to be a smart answer to the delicate, multi-layered social challenges of Tirana. The project, which was granted by DESIGNSCAPES, was an initiative of CHwB Albania and Collective Paper Aesthetics. The two organizations designed the unique events by fusing CHwB Albania’s former educative game series “E Ka Kush e KA” and Noa Haim’s design of pop-up participatory spaces.
The project interpreted four iconic historic structures of Tirana, some of which are still threatened by new developments or neglect, though a set of foldable interlocking pop-up urban furnishings made of corrugated cardboard. The models were designed to be assembled and disassembled using only the hands. The principal tool and its variations are based on a cardboard lattice that can be folded into three-dimensional building blocks. These blocks are connected to one another by cardboard joints, of which several of them integrated into the lattice itself.
Photo Courtesy of Noa Haim
In collaboration with the municipality of Tirana, two secondary public spaces were selected to host activities including the pop-up urban furnishings. The activities were an adaptable solution for the secondary public spaces that otherwise lacked quality content for the community. The project’s activities not only played an important role in the creation of a momentum for communities to connect and shape up, but also created an educational playground for children by embedding the cultural heritage dimensions of the city.
More spaces dedicated to them, but also more education and acquaintance with cultural heritage“. Overall, offering the creative and community-scale activities encouraged socializing within the affected communities and laid an important foundation for future developments within the establishment of other local initiatives by bringing attention to the issues at hand. Source and photos Courtesy of Noa Haim.
Photo Courtesy of Noa Haim 
Photo Courtesy of Noa Haim 
Photo Courtesy of Noa Haim 
Photo Courtesy of Noa Haim 
Photo Courtesy of Noa Haim 
Photo Courtesy of Noa Haim
