Transhumances

IDAUP students contributed to preliminary analyses for a regional plan led by SeaLine and Metropolis. The plan proposes a scenario of cultural valorization and economic development along the breathtaking Southern Albanian coast from Vlora to Saranda, framed in the transnational space planning of the Balkan coast. The cultural, ethnical and religious diversity of the surviving enclaves have been grounded by century-long territorialization processes engaging the Balkans, Greece, Corfu Island and Otranto across the strait. The landscape mosaic of tangible and intangible layers collapses into the seasonal settlements of transhumant pre-Ottoman shepherds: a pattern of pebble-stone wells shadowed by fig-tree woods along the shore. The text elaborates on the compatibility of geopolitical aspirations with the prerogatives of an architectural territorial vision and on the practical viability of combining principles from contradictory theoretical models of territorial development to deploy an effective plan.