OMA wins competition to expand aging Selman Stërmasi Stadium in Tirana

A proposal from OMA has been selected in an international competition to renovate the historic Selman Stërmasi Stadium in Tirana, Albania. The stadium is turning 69 years old this year and has undergone three previous renovations since the mid-1990s.

The project includes an expansion of public areas surrounding the stadium that will connect the Blloku and Komuna e Parisit neighborhoods of Tirana. OMA will refer to the city’s mountainous settings in the pursuit of their "layered composition," which arranges a mixed-use program of spaces including apartments, a hotel, offices, retail, and F&B offerings around a new triangular entrance plaza.

OMA’s Managing Partner David Gianotten says: "Our design is meant to accelerate the exciting changes taking place in the city, while fostering closer bonds within and between neighborhoods and communities here."

Seating capacity will be increased to 15,000 from its current 9,500. The stadium—which is also designed to evoke the glory of the 3rd Century Stadium of Amantia in southern Albania—will have a new seating bowl inserted and be surrounded by new buildings clad in natural stone and resembling the peaks of local mountain ranges. The result is said to "invoke both classical antiquity and geological time for a new national project in a changing city."

Associate Kees van Casteren adds: "By integrating the stadium into a new urban development, we wanted to connect two distinct areas of the city through a shared culture of football as well as spontaneous activities."

The design was led by Gianotten and Kees van Casteren, in collaboration with LOLA Landscape Architects, Royal Haskoning DHV, and Petrit Halilaj. Theirs was selected over other proposals led by Foster + Partners and Zaha Hadid Architects. OMA's competition win joins four others from Oppenheim Architecture, CHYBIK+KRISTOF, Coldefy, and Steven Holl that were announced in Tirana in the past two years.