BALFIN GREEN COAST III MASTERPLAN

The increase in the movement to the cities from rural settlements, the rapid transformations of society, and the surge in housing production that have marked the 20th century, have led to the change in the perception of construction, form of ownership and acquisition of it. Meantime, vernacular builders dropped by the wayside and disappeared. The rural and often underrated traditions of those builders have found their surviving fragments only in the humble shacks. Consequently, ‘vernacular’ is inadvertently recasted as an architecture symbolizing exiguity. In effect, the rich settlement strategies, and qualified architectural expressions with solid identities, which have been learned and developed over many years through experience, have receded in the new settlements, resulting countless of soulless urban fabrics.

Located in virgin shore of Palasë, Albania, Green Coast Village Masterplan confronts with this escalating problem of our age by critically seeking to understand and learn from the context with the aim of achieving a contemporary interpretation of Mediterranean settlements.

The project site has diverse and scattered land ownership status that poses a risk of emergence of dozens of withdrawn isolated developments. To prevent this hazardous form of development, the village masterplan dedicates itself to germinate a coherent whole to foster a vibrant community. It proposes a continuous, walkable green spine that is formed by the collection of certain portions of land from each plot. This vertebra is structured by the amalgamation of series of green corridors and their union results of a circulation network that acts like a bloodstream. It accommodates urban agriculture zones and a wide spectrum of open and closed public spaces in shelter scale to topographical building scale to nurture the social needs of the community. Those green ways also interconnect and regulate the relationship between different settlements within the masterplan. Their existence fosters a carefully orchestrated discourse between public and private domains, while seamlessly integrating elements of the natural world.

The village incorporates typical Mediterranean Settlement strategies like fragmentation, introducing composition of variations and prioritizing human scale to achieve a refined contemporary interpretation. The masterplan embraces the steep, and topographically specific site by harmoniously settling into it with cascades to sustain undisturbed vistas opening to the sea view even though the challenging inclination of the land presents various urban design challenges. The Mediterranean DNA of the village is also consolidated with materiality of the design. The tension between solid and void, sun-soaked and overshadowed surfaces are rendered with local materials like natural stones and plasters to accentuate plasticity derived by articulation of masses.

As a result of meticulous best-use studies, Green Coast Village features urban piazzas that is an intrinsic feature of a typical Mediterranean village, narrow and shaded streets opening up to views, restaurants that are serving vegetables and fruits grown in urban agriculture zones, cultural hubs that are fostering vibrant communities, apartments, villas, local shops, health center, leisure led facilities, pool, restaurants, indoor and outdoor sport facilities, kids play zones and many more functions…