Inside

Klodiana Millona – Graduation project 1617

The Unfinished House – What if this was great?

My research has as a starting point the phenomenon of the incomplete houses left permanently
under construction in Albania, an archipelago of unfinished buildings scattered all over the country.
A whole landscape filled with concrete skeletons, some of them being in use, others completely
vacant, and some still under construction. I explored this “unfinished” state with the aim to
recognise values that can be translated into design strategies that advocate imaginative
speculation, implying that it is not the fault of the house, nor the material, but of the social
conditions.

By employing a banal optimism and a dose of humour, my research manifests itself as a kind of
pseudo experimental methodology that questions the actual concept of the city. Albania, in this
case, provides a potential canvas to test speculations and interventions that have the disturbing
and at the same time exiting question: What if this was great? What if this is the house of the
future? The project tries to answer these questions by celebrating this permanent state of
unfinishedness and encourage appropriation through time.

Anyone (including me in the beginning) could think that this is an in between situation, a turning
point because of the economy and the political situation in Albania. But as I progressed my
research I started seeing it as a way of understanding architecture itself. Strongly believing that
architecture organises and builds relationships defining possible futures, this project supports the
idea that it doesn’t have a beginning or an end and is always a continuity of something precedent.
Therefore, in this research the house is understood not as a single entity, but as a system of parts
that go beyond its physicality.

All images @INSIDE & Klodiana Millona

Find all images in the Graduation part of INSIDE Magazine 1617.