Survival through Architecture

This book provides an historiographical account and formal analysis of the architectural work ofSkënder Kristo Luarasi (1908-1976). Luarasi studied architecture at Graz University of Technology(TU Graz). For forty years, until he died in 1976, Skënder Kristo Luarasi designed and administeredthe construction of more than 250 buildings throughout Albania. Relying on original drawings andarchival material, this book punctuates key moments of Luarasi’s oeuvre by staging it as an integralpart of the Modern Architecture in Albania. Modernism in Albania is often perceived as an importedaffair, without a history of its own, ‘dropped‘ in a so-called ‘Balkan’, ‘Folkloric’ context. Against suchcolonialist methodology, this book argues that there was already a modernism in Albania, which waspart of the international modernism. It is in this context that this book reads the architectural workof Skënder Kristo Luarasi.