Street Entrance view. © MVRDV Architects
Curated by Archirev Editorial | Feature Story | Published Nov 10th 2025
Source: MVRDV Architects
PROJECT TYPOLOGY: MIXED-USE
Project name: The Grand Ballroom
Location: Tirana, Albania
Architect: MVRDV
Founding Partner in charge: Winy Maas
Partner: Bertrand Schippan
Size: 90,200 m²
Program: Sports Arena, Housing, Hotel, Retail, Parking
Status: In Development (2025)
Client: Trema Tech shpk, Likado BV, Albanian Capital Group shpk, BCN Investments BV
Primary Systems: Hybrid structural framework with adaptive façade and
Climate-responsive building intelligence (DERBI-E + Ramboll)
Renders: © MVRDV Visualization Team — Antonio Luca Coco, Angelo La Delfa, Luana La Martina, Jarosław Jeda, Stefano Fiaschi, Ciprian Buzdugan
Tirana is learning to dance, and MVRDV is conducting the choreography. In their latest competition-winning proposal, MVRDV reimagines the new Asllan Rusi Sports Palace as a sculptural sphere that fuses public life with performance, leisure, and living. Named The Grand Ballroom, the 90,200 m² complex will feature a 6,000-seat arena, a hotel, residential apartments, and ground-level retail, serving as a civic landmark where the city gathers, plays, and celebrates together.
Developed in collaboration with a consortium comprising Trema Tech shpk, Likado BV, Albanian Capital Group shpk, and BCN Investments BV, the project will contribute to Tirana’s growing collection of expressive, world-class architecture, furthering the city’s bold trajectory of urban renewal.
Aerial render of The Grand Ballroom overlooking Tirana’s urban fabric. © MVRDV Architects
Architectural Concept: A Sphere for Sport and Society
The design program. © MVRDV Architects
The Grand Ballroom takes the form of a shimmering sphere over 100 metres in diameter. Both literal and symbolic, the shape recalls a ball while evoking historic visions of enlightenment from Étienne-Louis Boullée’s Cenotaph for Newton to Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes.
Render showing the full spherical volume and its reflective façade in Tirana’s skyline. © MVRDV Architects
The spherical form allows MVRDV to integrate multiple programs within a single, continuous envelope. By stacking the arena, hotel, and apartments vertically, the project achieves high density on a compact urban site while maintaining openness and permeability at ground level.
Residential terraces and interior atrium views. © MVRDV Architects
The lower façade tapers inward to carve space for public plazas and outdoor courts, creating a generous civic threshold that invites everyday use beyond ticketed events. Above, the curvature also tapers inward just like a sphere, to form terraces and courtyards, translating structural efficiency into moments of communal delight.
Render showing the lower façade tapering inward to create spaces for outdoor courts. © MVRDV Architects
Render showing the upper façade tapering inward to create spaces for terraces. © MVRDV Architects
“The Grand Ballroom will become a beacon. A place to play, meet, and celebrate,” says Winy Maas, Founding Partner at MVRDV. “The spherical shape is a reference to the round ball used by so many sports, but also to enlightenment and optimism. It connects people through play and shared experience.”
Program and Interiors
The project is organized as a vertical city, where each layer supports a distinct program while remaining visually and spatially connected.
At ground level, a ring of retail spaces, cafés, and amenities activates the public realm. Steps and outdoor tribunes descend into a lower-ground concourse, linking directly to the main arena level above.
Level B1 floor plan showing retail spaces, cafés, and amenities. © MVRDV Architects
The arena, accessed via short bridges from the plaza, forms the heart of the building. It features 6,000 spectator seats for basketball and volleyball, two training courts tucked beneath the stands, and flexible floor configurations that allow for concerts and community events
Interior render showing arena, the oculus and hospitality levels. © MVRDV Architects
Ground floor level showing two training courts. © MVRDV Architects
Plan of the arena at level 2. © MVRDV Architects
Section showing program layering — retail, arena, hotel, apartments. © MVRDV Architects
Rising above, a two-storey hotel overlooks the playing court through interior windows and cantilevered lounges, offering guests a view of matches or performances directly below. The hotel’s amenities are positioned around a circular oculus, enclosed by a soundproof glass layer that maintains acoustic isolation while preserving visual connection with the arena below. The upper levels of the building house residential apartments within a double-shell structure, where the inner dome forms a vast semi-outdoor courtyard garden filled with trees and terraces.
Interior render showing a view from the restaurant. © MVRDV Architects
Throughout the shell, three- and four-storey rectangular openings cut out the form, providing daylight, cross-ventilation, and small themed communal gardens. At the very top, duplex penthouses open onto private terraces overlooking Tirana and the Dajti Mountains, while a double-height skybar offers panoramic views through a second openable oculus.
Interior render showing the skybar. © MVRDV Architects
Material and Structural Strategy
The Grand Ballroom’s structure combines reinforced concrete and steel to strike a balance between stability, flexibility, and openness. The arena bowl and cores are formed in concrete for acoustic and thermal mass. At the same time, steel trusses span across the arena to achieve the long, column-free spans essential for visibility and crowd movement.
Structural core, floor Truss, and double shell columns. © MVRDV Architects
Working with DERBI-E and Ramboll, MVRDV developed a hybrid structural system where transfer beams bridge the retail base and arena platform, and an adaptive façade system manages daylight and thermal performance.
The double-shell envelope, clad in a reflective glass-and-metal composite, serves both aesthetic and environmental roles, mirroring the city while controlling heat gain and glare. Operable openings and natural ventilation shafts integrate with predictive building systems designed to optimize comfort and reduce energy demand.
This approach ensures that the structure performs as both a monument and machine: engineered for 6,000 spectators, yet responsive to Tirana’s Mediterranean climate and evolving urban rhythms.
Structural shell curvature. © MVRDV Architects
Symbolism and Urban Identity
Beyond its technical complexity, the Grand Ballroom embodies Tirana’s new architectural confidence. The building’s spherical form eliminates any sense of “front” or “back,” embracing the city equally from all sides.
The plaza, public courts, and gardens surrounding the base extend the spirit of sport into daily life, encouraging community activity even outside event hours. The upper residential and hospitality layers, meanwhile, offer a model of urban coexistence, where leisure, work, and culture intersect in a single, continuous form.
By merging architecture, art, and movement, the project reinforces MVRDV’s vision of buildings as active participants in city life, not isolated icons, but social instruments tuned to collective energy.
“A great sphere in the heart of Tirana can become a temple to sport and community,” adds Maas. “By connecting different functions, it invites everyone to be part of the action.”
Night render showing the illuminated sphere and public plaza. © MVRDV Architects