The second edition of the international “Bread & Heart” festival opened in the capital, a unique event of European Albania that brings together more than 600 renowned architects, urban planners, developers, and professionals from Europe, Asia, North America, and Latin America.

The festival serves as a platform for exchanging experiences, discussing the challenges of urban and social development, and shaping ideas and policies in support of Albania’s continued transformation.

In his remarks, Prime Minister Edi Rama emphasized the role of architecture as an instrument that goes beyond the construction of physical structures, influencing the way people live and coexist. He also highlighted the importance of finding a balance between development and the protection of nature.

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Prime Minister Edi Rama: Thank you so much, everyone.

This is the second edition. In the first, I made an opening speech which I carefully crafted. This time, I was doing other things. So, I asked my close collaborators to craft for me a speech and I realized it was awfully long and it was the last thing you’d expect from me.

So, I think I’ve said what I had to say and you know it about my faith on architecture, about my belief that architects are privileged babies of God, and they are the only ones among the humans that have been given by God the chance to play God because all the others need the architects to live their lives and to build their worlds.

We would not be here all around this space if there was not an architect behind it. And we would not be living in a city if there were no architects behind it.

So this is, to me, a very strong reason to believe in architecture as something which is far beyond buildings, which is far beyond materials, which is far beyond what we see at the end as a physical presence. Because it is about imagining how people can live differently and how can coexist differently. We wanted to challenge ourselves and all of you by picking a theme that unfortunately is always used to confront the architects, to confront the developers, to confront the energies of imagining and of daring to build different realities, to confront them as coming from the negative side of life, the theme of nature, environment, landscape.

And challenging ourselves and challenging you to help us understand it better, it means trying to also realize our limits, your limits, and in the meantime trying to listen to each other about how we can overcome those limits, how we can make a further step in proving that conserving nature is not at all, in any time and anywhere, just the same attitude of not developing.

Conserving nature can be and should be also about developing in harmony with nature, not to put nature in the service of the people, but also to put people in service of nature. It’s much easier said than done, of course, but I always remember something I was told by a very crazy guy who is not an architect, who is not an artist who started as a successful businessman in France then he moved in latin america because he was obsessed about healing communities and his word that i’ll never forget which is very challenging was sustainable is not at all correct towards the future generations. What is correct to future generations, it is what is correct also towards nature, which is regenerative politics, regenerative attitude towards the environment, regenerative developments through architecture and through planning. So how to go from being sustainable to being regenerative? How to not simply think about, “Okay, we have to cut some trees and we have to plant some trees, but not here, somewhere else.”

And how to do both, to build and plant, to make people feel invited, feel welcome in nature, and to not tell them, “If you want to live with nature, if you want to live in different landscapes, you have to just leave in the evening because wolves may eat you. No, you can also sleep there in the evening. You can also wake up in the morning and work there. You can also invite people there.

So now I’m entering the danger zone of my speech getting long, but this is a bit the spirit. And I like very much when the spirit is not clearly defined by the words and when in a gathering like this we help each other to find word by word, image by image , story by story, something that makes sense for all of us together.

And what I find amazing today, even more than last year, It’s not that we have a bigger number of architects, of professionals coming to this festival, and that’s why Ada and Adelina had to invent other spaces where people are sitting and are following and then they’ll talk. But it’s about the fact that here we have not just some great architects. We have some great architects, yes, but coming from all over the places, from Europe, to China, from US to Latin America.

And it’s a big honor for me to have here today someone that even in my wildest dream I didn’t think I would see coming here to just honor something I was doing with some other architects, Santiago Calatrava. It’s also very humbling to me to have here Pier from Herzog de Meuron, but I’m not asking you to applaud him because he doesn’t deserve it. Because, yeah, you don’t deserve it. Because unlike Maestro Calatrava, I was chasing Herzog de Meuron for so long, as I was chasing also some others from you for long, and I didn’t get even a no thank you email.  The reason why I’m humbled that Pierre is here because he presents one of the greatest practices in today’s world. But the reason why I don’t want you to applaud him is the grudge I have that what I couldn’t do, a developer did. He brought Pier.

And it’s amazing because when I am afraid of developers, And I want to simply tell them: “Guy, you can’t build this project. It’s impossible.” I tell them: “You can, but bring here Ricardo Bofill, God bless his soul. Bring here Herzog de Meuron, bring here Stephen Hall.” And guess what? These are the people that never responded my emails. And then I get pictures of these guys. that are there just because they are forced to go making selfies with these great figures I dreamt to see live.

So it’s amazing, it’s really amazing, it’s about all of this, but it’s also about developers. It’s about working with them, but it’s also about taming them. It’s about using them, but it’s also about being aware that we are used by them. And the middle of all this is nature. In the middle of this are the plots, as you call them, to be built. The many other things to deal with.

And thanking you so much with truly deepest gratitude for trusting in this project or in this dream or in this effort, whatever you want to call it. You are here and I know that in the beginning, in the first trip you came here because you were curious to see me. Now I’m not needed anymore because it’s Albania that makes you come back.

And my last word with some of you I’ve shared, but not with all of you, is in all my career I got a lot of attacks and I got some compliments. Of course, I don’t mean the great honor that is worth all the attacks which is being voted and trusted by the people to lead them because they give you the privilege to make things happen. They give you the privilege to change realities. They give you the privilege to see a school where there was not one, to see a hospital where there was not one, to see houses where the earthquake erased all of them and to see people entering these houses.

So in these moments you say who cares about the attacks they are worth being endured because politics when it’s used in the right way is great. So I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about compliments from people

So I want to share with you the best biggest compliment I ever had and I will ever have from a big leader in a very rich country out of Europe, also passionate about architecture, but of course with a lot of money to bring them. And I sent him images from the first Bread and Heart Festival with also, you know, your work, some of your work. Usually he is a very busy man, so he replies with emojis, hearts, smiles, applause, Thanks. Not very talkative to say the truth.

It was one of the longest messages I got from him, which went like this: “Wow, Albania, brother, we really need to sit one day and you have to tell me how you can do all this with no money. Thank you so much.