Location: Petrelë, Albania
Date: 2025
Programme: Faith Park
Client: NTPA AIC+MIRAL GROUP
Status: Competition
Team: Traumnovelle (architects), peer architects ( architects), Apparat collective (architects), Partero (landscape architects), Ivan Morison (artist)
Nevertheless, a Garden on the Way
“Nevertheless” is the word that moves forward when everything falls apart.
A word of insistence. A breath taken in the middle of collapse.
A path word. A pilgrim’s word.
We believe that spirituality begins with a step.
A step toward something larger than oneself. Toward the unknown. The sacred. The other.
This is not a project confined to a site.
It is the construction of a threshold. A waypoint within a longer, older, and still unfolding journey.
Faith as Movement through Light
Across all spiritual traditions, walking is sacred. So is light.
To walk is to enact faith. In grief, in hope, in search.
In pilgrimage, in protest, in exile, in ritual.
Each fragment of the park is attuned to a gesture of the walk:
To arrive. Spaces of rest and reception.
To remember. Tactile landscapes that reawaken stories.
To mourn. Silent clearings and mirrors of water.
To share. Circles for words, meals, rituals.
To continue. Paths opening outward, back into the world.
A Grounded, Expansive Proposal
This is not a park in the landscape.
It is a park as landscape.
A space that connects geographies, generations, and beliefs.
A spiritual infrastructure in motion.
It grows from local materials. It is shaped by local hands.
It becomes part of a wider cartography of care.
Intergenerational. Interspecies. Interfaith.
Rooted and nomadic at once.
A commons for the body, the spirit, and the Earth.
Nevertheless, the Path Continues
In a time of fragmentation, of climate grief, of migration,
we propose a space to walk, to pause, to care for one another, and to continue.
A space that does not claim authority, but offers hospitality.
A space that says to every passing being:
You are not alone.
You may rest.
Nevertheless, the path continues.
And at the end,
there is Light.
A Park Along the Way
We propose Faith Park not as a destination, but as a pause.
A sacred station within a broader movement of reconnection.
Matter. Ritual. Light. Time.
From Tirana, across valleys and highlands,
toward the Albanian countryside and the Adriatic beyond,
linking forgotten pilgrimage routes, memory paths, and ecological corridors.
The park becomes a node within a network of spiritual landscapes.
Ancient and emerging.
A Park for the Feet, the Breath, the Soul
Faith Park is a living threshold.
Here,
the walker finds shade and silence.
the exile finds memory.
the seeker finds no answer, but a gesture of welcome.
