A short film created as a spontaneous action of inclusion of a local taxi driver into the conversation of foreign passengers, three friends. Although we didn’t speak the same language as him, in this short moment in time we let the music he likes become our way of silent communication with him. ‘Marjana therras’ is a personal, poetic view of Tirana, where different simultaneous scenes in a symbolic try to evoke different emotions; scenes of old photographs and bucolic nostalgia, contrasted by estranged people on the streets looking at their phones. While I was staying in Tirana I had a strong feeling of empathy towards older, local people. I saw that often they don’t speak any foreign languages, while at the same time, because of economic challenges Albanian people face they are “forced to” work with tourists. As Tirana is rapidly growing and changing, the city center is full of foreigners, both investors and tourists. Local people don’t take a taxi — they take a bus or they drive a taxi. Local people often don’t go out to eat in restaurants — the eat at home or they work in restaurants. Economic differences between local people and foreigners are felt in all areas of life. In Tirana, I had a strong feeling that local people from Tirana often feel as second-grade citizens in their own city, “occupied” by English-speaking foreigners, surrounded by fancy shops and restaurants, which they, local people — can’t afford. This short film is a documentation of one humble effort of trying to make a local taxi driver feel like he’s at home in his own city, by a simple act of showing an interest in his culture through his own personal — music playlist.

Second episode of a mini series about Belgian contemporary architecture commissioned by Wallonie-Bruxelles Architecture in the framework of EUMiesAward 2022 . Let’s discover iMAL, the Brussels based Art Center for Digital Cultures & Technology designed by Central Ofaau and Np2f.

The film aims to repurpose 2000 acres of underperforming and marginalized land for shared timber farming to enact a more adequate synergistic relationship (socio-economically and environmentally) between the built space and the fragmented Hudson Valley’s forest. In Hudson Valley, most of the trees are privately owned, growing on land at the fringe of urban development- Wildland Urban Intermix (WUI). Tackling the large-scale U.S. monopoly of engineered-timber products, the project envisions a bottom-up timber economy- a vertically integrated, resilient timber supply chain- as a way to incentivize private landowners to sustainably manage their own forests while directly accessing a shared infrastructure of researching, harvesting, manufacturing, and retail, waste-recycling, and branding for their timber product. By creating shared collaborative infrastructure for local forest and small-timber-business owners and entrepreneurs, new social partnerships and equally-distributed amenities will be created, boosting local economies while preserving the local and regional forest ecologies. By sustaining long-term forest-plant-based economic development through this shared co-op system, Hudson Valley’s scaled-down timber industry will be funneled while a more socially adequate distribution of profits between diverse communities will be achieved. Composed of four entities, the Center for Resilient Forestry, which is clustered with Wood Innovation Facilities, the Certification Centers, the Sawmill and Distribution Center with additional facilities for Recycling and Storage and Renewable Energy Generation, this project provides a lasting infrastructure that promotes a holistic framework for profitable and sustainable timber agroforestry that ensures the wellbeing of both the forest and its inhabitants.