"MVRDV's Grand Ballroom proposes a spherical arena of colossal scale for Tirana, Albania. Designed to replace the Asllan Rusi sports palace, the project brings together a 6,000-seat venue, hotel, apartments, and retail in a single continuous form. The sphere, over 100 meters (330 feet) in diameter, rises from a compact urban site between the city center and the airport road, appearing at once grounded and weightless."
"The building's circular volume folds gently into the landscape. Around its perimeter, open plazas and outdoor courts extend the public life of the arena. At ground level, shallow steps and shaded terraces guide visitors toward a sunken ring of cafés and shops, where the building meets the earth. The approach is choreographed through shifts in scale and level that reveal the building's interior structure piece by piece."
"The architects at MVRDV organize the Grand Ballroom's programming as a stack of horizontal strata that build upward from public to private. The arena occupies the central tier - a luminous bowl enclosed by sweeping curves of seating and light-filtering structural ribs. Above, two floors of hotel rooms are suspended between the stands and the roof, their windows offering direct views into the court below."
MVRDV's Grand Ballroom is a 100-meter-plus spherical mixed-use building for Tirana that combines a 6,000-seat arena, hotel, apartments, and retail in a single continuous volume. The circular form folds into the landscape, creating perimeter plazas, outdoor courts, shallow steps, shaded terraces, and a sunken ring of cafés and shops. Programming stacks horizontally from public arenas at the central tier to suspended hotel floors and residential apartments within a double-shell above. A glazed oculus connects hotel rooms to the court, while a vast semi-outdoor dome with trees, walkways, and seating provides a communal garden for residents.
Read at designboom | architecture & design magazine
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