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Ervin Taçi
Ervin Taçi (born 17 February 1974) is an Albanian architect. He is the co-founder and creative partner of DEA Studio (Design Engineering Architecture Studio) since 2002. Known for his innovative and ambitious designs and projects, many of his buildings defy traditional architectural conventions and dimensions. He often incorporates sustainable development ideas and sociological concepts into his designs, but tries to achieve a balance between the playful and practical approaches to architecture.

Early life and biography
The professional career as Architect was other than a casualty. He born and grew in a family very close connected to the art. His father Llazar Taçi (one of the most prestigious artist painters in Albania) special art attributes in the genre of the composition formed the basis for his ulterior career. Since his early age in elementary school he featured his talent in free drawings and developed it in years. In the later studies he distinguished his ability in geometry. Crossing of the both skills Art & Geometry oriented him versus Architecture studies.

Career
He began the studies in 1992. During studies years, Ervin played an important role as the co-founder and chairman of Albanian Student League of Architecture (ASLA). 1996 sign an important role in his posterior career after the experience in an alternative design studio in the Architecture Faculty of Tirana, guided by the well-known and Emeritus Professor of Florida University, Harry Merritt. The concept of “social interaction”, which the American professor reminds as a permanent postulate, that professionals should not forget in each design creation. It was later and continuous to be the philosophy of DEA Studio, that Ervin co-founded in 2002. Ervin Taçi finished the studies of Architecture in 1998 as Msc. Architect. In 1999 he attended his thesis project the “Multimodal station of Tirana” under the guidance of Albanian professor Koço Miho and Italian professors Carlo Canepari e Ferdinando Semboloni of “Facolta di Architettura” of Florence. The complexity of this project grew his professional personality and prepare him for the big scale projects. After the graduation as urban designer and architect he work for one year (1999-2000) in the architectural design studio “Enigma K” and in 2000-2002 in the Institute of Urban Planning and Research. Meanwhile, he built the bases for a future design company with his wife Klodiana Emiri and his friend, the neo-graduated architect Alket Meslani. In 2002 they decide to co-found DEA Studio, Design Engineering Architecture Studio and were immediately distinguished for their special approach on urban design concepts. The reputation of the company DEA Studio grew fast and they get many assigned works, in the beginning mainly in residential buildings and later on in hospitality, education, industrial, religious, culture buildings, public spaces & squares, waterfronts, etc. In 2012 Ervin Taçi was elected Member of the Executive Board of Albanian Association of Architects (AAA) giving his continuous contribute and expertise for structuring the Tariff Manual for Architecture and Engineering services. Alongside his architectural practice, he has been active as visiting professor at the different Architecture Faculties.

Projects
Medival Art Museum(2015-2017)                        GENERAL LOCAL PLAN OF SARANDA (2015-2017)                                  Black Diamond  (2014-2016)

Tirana Olympic Park (2014-2016)                                                         Borea Ski resort

Medieval Art
Medieval Art Museum or as it could very well be also called the Iconographic Museum represents one of the most precious exemplars of Albania cultural treasures. The national treasure contains quite 8000 thousands of Icons and not only. The exposition capacity is quadrupled with the new Museum from 150 to 600 Icons. The projects has foreseen even a future addition of the museum till to 1500 Icons. There are designed 4 special experiencing spaces along museum routing. The Gold Room is immediately welcoming the public with its attracting atrium space and Pettersbourg wall (hanging system). The second, the Black Labyrinth, routes the visitor to a mysterious black space full of interactive spirit of discovering. The third, the Red Salon, monumentalizes the major exposition elements “Iconostas” of 5.2m height and 10 m length in a huge and red colored space. The fourth, The Illuminated Salon ends the museum routing with an “Illuminatum space” that strongly sublimate the theme of the Museum. The Architecture of the Museum initiates by an existing deserted building, inner an existing park of Korça city. The building has generated for years social/crime problems and it was the choice of the Town hall to make the Big Change bringing even real estate values to the area, building an important National Cultural Institution. The geometry of the existing structure defined even the major geometry of the new building, interpreting it in the atmosphere of the new theme. The design tried to bring to the public and visitor the atmosphere of the ambiguity mainly through Medieval materials, stone, wood and wrought iron and spontaneity of volume voids. The project conceived also a perimeter of water around the building, analogizing the Medieval castles in their usual defense design interpretation. The main entrance has interpreted the existing building elevated level exactly as a castle bridge. The new museum volume merges very well with the existing park, dialoging constantly with its landscape.

General Local Plan of Saranda
General Local Plan of Saranda challenge the uncontrolled and problematic developments in the last 25 years, in the urban structure of the most beautiful coastal city of Albania. The plan redefines the urban mobility in the city, proposing the bypass road for the city access and traffic discharges. Another bypass road is proposed along the South coast, Butrinti UNESCO site and Greece. The plan dedicates the existing coastal national road only for the access of the existing and future planned hospitality structures along the coast. Both infrastructural major proposals will finally liberate a deep breath in the city and will bring the normality during the tourism season. The first, city infrastructure intervention is followed in cohesion with the urban mobility in the city promoting public transportation and bike dedicated lines. The General Local Plan indicates the potentiality for the construction of an feasible airport for Saranda, which will exponentially grow the international tourist number for Saranda (Butrinti UNESCO site), Himara, Gjirokastra (UNESCO site) and all the other agro tourism territories of South-West Albania.

The Plan ambitions is to achieve a sustainable growth and in the next 10-15 years to achieve the highest level of international tourism industry in the same standards of Corfu.

Black Diamond
Black Landmark Tirana, a multifunctional building, represents already a spot for the city in an important street of the Albanian capital. Site is positioned right in the curve geometry of “Elbasani” street, impacting visually both transit directions and becoming a reference point for the street itself. The black volume is a design choice for emphasizing new urban intervention and contrasting it with the existing neighbor old brick buildings. It is a continuous playful game of black rough material in contrast with the fragility and transparency of the glass. This play is getting more and more surprising by the yellow functional voids of apartment loggias in the 3 dimensionality of the building body.

Tirana Olympic Park
In 2014 Albanian Government through the Ministry of Education and Sports decided to transform an existing 20,000 m2 area in a new training center for the most prestigious Olympic national sports, revitalizing in contemporary a huge urban important area of Tirana.

DEA Studio Masterplan for “Tirana Olympic Park” included an indoor training sport hall for basketball & volleyball, weightlifting and Greco-Roman wrestling training center, indoor swimming pool sport hall, athletic track, soccer training center, an athlete hospitality center and offices of Albanian Olympic Committee and all Albanian Olympic Federations.The first building of Tirana Olympic Park with the main impact in the urban context is the building positioned parallel to the city main road and right in the entrance of the national sport complex.The building accommodates theOlympic Sports Albanian Federations offices, Albanian Olympic Committee headquarter, National Sport Agency headquarter, National team training center for the Weightlifting and National team training center for the Greco-Roman wrestling.Very special in the diagram was a conceived and designed a low slope from the sidewalk toward the building in the atmosphere of an open amphitheater. Both Sports Weightlifting and Greco Roman Wrestling are the most successful Albanian sports in the international level … with a lot of medals…. people are proud of them and why not appreciating their Champions in a distinguished presence, a “normal” way along the parallel walking in the sidewalk and a “dedicated” one, natural in the grass where they could sit and see their champions. We believe, that this detail converges with the main concept of all Tirana Olympic Park of the energy-synergy sport-people.

Borea Ski Resort
Peja will have on the near future a pedestrian boulevard & biking track of 1.2 km in its urban structure, that will connect Peja center with the proposed “Borea” square, as finalization of the recreational and functional pathway. This represents DEA studio macro scale conceptual proposal on the macro context of the city.

Finalization of the boulevard with cable car station, as a precise destination for the city, stimulates the design team to conceive the space around it as a public square with all the proper facilities in its perimeter geometry. The area around the cable car station is designed to be physically formulated by the volume of the hotel in the Western orientation of the site and the apart hotel in the Southern one. The square itself is conceived to be not completely a flat one but it will be special with its “visual movement”. The trick of changing silhouettes through the interpretation of the ground level as the continuity of the existing hilly terrain morphology of the site East orientation. The arrival in “Borea” square will give to the people the impression of a space shared in between the nature and human creation. At the same time it will be a preliminary psychological preparation for their later on nature destination towards the mountains. The square will have its focal element, as a vice-versa arrival point, the cable car station. Its deconstructivist architecture is not by case …, but … like an urban sculpture properly in the gravity area, it could sign the landmark of “Borea Resort”.The silhouette changes and the architecture “play” with the alternation of the levels does not remain a detached detail of the entire “urban scenery” of the complex. It is clearly identified even in the architecture of the resort, through the silhouette of the proposed buildings, which appears “troubled”, but not occasionally in analogy with the wonderful silhouette of the Mountains on their background. All around the functional urban space will appear a different silhouette with different emotions and spatial effects, that could potentially stick up the complex itself and could be … why not … its identikit noted in the world of global tourism. The resort will be not dedicated only to the winter season sports, but long year with different sports like, hiking, mountain biking, alpinist, skateboard‍, rollers, ping pong, basketball, volleyball, etc.

Design philosophy
He early understood, that Architecture is not a tool, that belongs to the trained people to create only pretty facades or expressive sculptures, but really to raise question on how we want to live. His philosophy starts at what roman architect Vitruvius centuries ago in his “de architectura” proclaimed, as three qualities of a building firmitas, utilitas, venustas (durable, useful, and beautiful), continues to the definition of a specific concept and identity for each creation and doesn’t ends in terms of limits. In the center of attention is the concept of social interaction in a further more metro-megapolitan world of wasted human values. “Architects should never forget for whom they are dedicating their projects”; emphasizes his professor Harry Merritt. So, his research is a continuous effort to merge the borderlands between sociology, psychology, architecture and planning, trying to find equilibriums. His philosophy and approach on architecture is matching ultimately with the philosophy of Danish Architect Jahn Gehl. He was fascinated by the open lecture “Cities for people”, the neglected dimension, of Jahn Gehl in September 2011 in New York. His efforts for transforming even New York from the city of traffic to the bike city are achieving the first results. It was really impressive the end of the open lecture illustrated with the famous song of Franky Sinatra New York, New York… “When you can make it there … you can make it anywhere, New York, New York !!” Jan Gehl research on the safe bike paths, as alternative for the public transport in an human dimension, reflect at him for the future of the Albanian cities and wider. He is actually expressing his philosophy and approach on design in lot of won design open tenders in Albania, regarding revitalization of existing public spaces and buildings and designing the new ones.

Awards
His company DEA Studio sh.p.k has been awarded as winner of open national competitions in 18 occasions and internationally awarded as winner in the international open international competition of “Durana Tirana-Durresi Economic Corridor”, Winner of “Borea Ski resort” in Peja, Kosovo, third place in the international competition “New Parliamentary complex of the Republic of Albania” and the third place in the international competition “Tirana Train Station Towers”. DEA Studio has in its background 4 Nominations in its career. 3 Nominations for the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture Mies Van Der Rohe 2019 award, nomination for BIG SEE Architecture Award 2019 and best project (Grand Prix) in the category Public and Commercial Architecture for “Tirana Olimpic Park” project. 1 Nomination for Korça Medieval Art Museum in best project (Grand Prix) in the category Culture buildings 2018. He has been part of different international conferences invited as Guest Speaker and representant of Albania in the SHARE International Architecture and Engineering Forum, in Tirana 2017 edition, Budapest 2018 edition and Cyprus 2020 edition. In 2019 he was part of the Edition in Manifestos Section “Designing the profile of future architect” Edition, Collection of Thoughts, Interviews and Manifestoes on architecture In 2020 his company DEA Studio sh.p.k was awarded by the SHARE Tirana 2020 “Merits in sustainable architecture 2019” In 2020 Jury was selected as member of the international Architecture student competition “Inspireli Awards 2020”.