What Tirana Chose in the 2025 Tower Vote

In October 2025, FABER invited the public to vote for the most and least preferred additions to Tirana’s rapidly changing skyline. The online poll presented 24 completed, under-construction and proposed towers, recording 3,786 individual “like” and “dislike” votes. Because participants could evaluate each project separately, this figure represents total votes rather than unique voters.

The winner of the Albanian Architecture Awards 2025 Public Vote for Favourite Tall Building was Forever Green, also known as Alban Tower, designed by Archea Associati under Marco Casamonti. It received 110 positive votes, or 63.22% of its 174 votes, against 64 negative votes.

Completed after a long construction process, the building is now part of Tirana’s everyday life. Its upper levels accommodate a café, panoramic restaurant and other public-facing facilities offering distinctive views across the city. There is a certain irony here: for those who voted against towers, reaching the top may be one of the best ways to enjoy Tirana without seeing the tower beneath them. 

At the opposite end of the poll, New Hotel Tirana International received the highest number and proportion of negative votes: 133 dislikes, representing 87.5% of its 152 votes. It received only 19 positive votes and was therefore the public’s least-preferred proposal.

A broader pattern emerged from the results. Participants generally responded more positively to older towers and buildings that had already been completed and incorporated into the city, while several unbuilt concepts and early visual proposals received stronger negative reactions.

This raises an important question: do people fundamentally dislike tall buildings, or do they initially resist unfamiliar images of the city and gradually accept them once the buildings become real, inhabited and familiar?

A visualisation can be judged only as an object. A completed building is experienced through its uses, views, public spaces and place within daily life. The 2025 vote therefore tells us not only which towers people preferred, but also how familiarity may reshape public attitudes toward architecture and Tirana’s evolving skyline.