Mario Cucinella Architects is an established architectural firm with offices in Bologna and New York and an international team of 90 professionals including architects, engineers, graphic designers, model makers, and researchers.
The firm was established in Paris in 1992 and opened its offices in Bologna in 1999.
MC A has extensive experience in architectural design that combines environmental and energy efficiency strategies and relies on an R&D department that carries out researches on sustainability with a holistic approach.
Mario Cucinella Architects has received recently the go-ahead for Ekspozita Building, a new 93m tall mixed-use statement building in the centre of Tirana, Albania; comprising commercial, residential and public amenity spaces.
The building’s unconventional shape allows it to partially encircle a generous new green space that is particularly valuable in a busy capital where open areas are few and far between.
Generous planting to the residential upper floors enhances the sense of a green oasis, while the inward-facing balconies give a feeling of enclosure and protection from the busy city.
The building occupies three and a half sides of a square footprint, opening its courtyard up to the south, onto the tree-lined Blv Gergi Fishta - one of Tirana’s major roads.
The result of its unusual geometry is that the ground floor of the building, plus another much smaller two-storey building which will be used as a nursery/kindergarten, occupies only 44% of the plot.
The Ekspozita Building is highly insulated, with the intention that it will need no heating or cooling in the two shoulder seasons. The architect has also paid close attention to solar shading, to minimise heat gain in the generously glazed building in the summer. The large terraces to the apartments act as passive solar regulators.
The design team calculates that these strategies will mean that the building uses 30% less energy than other comparable developments.
The building will be starting on site in 2020 and is scheduled for completion in 2023.
The firm has also projects in progress in Europe, China, Central Africa, Algeria and the Middle East, including Viertel Zwei in Wien, Austria and the new headquarters for the Algerian Regulatory Authority for Post and Telecommunications in Algiers.
Virgil Hilts