Brussels-based 51N4E deals with matters of architectural design, concept development, and strategic spatial transformations. Headed by Johan Anrys and Freek Persyn, the office was founded in 1998 and aspires to contribute to social and urban transformation. This book - part photo-novel, part real-life journey - tells the story of 51N4E in multiple ways. Combining short stories by Falma Fshazi with photographs by Stefano Graziani, it is a narrative of discovery and embracing otherness, as well as a retrospective look at projects since 2004. It describes the encounters and processes by which the architects learned to operate in a culture and context very different from their own.

"This dual-narrative, part photo-novel, part real-life journey, tells one story in multiple ways. In its first part, the book couples short stories by Falma Fshazi with photographs by Stefano Graziani. The story of a discovery; an encounter with a strange land, beyond East and West, and a city, Tirana. The second part casts a restrospective look at the construction of a tower designed by 51N4E, and on all the projects that followed in its wake, from 2004 onwards. It describes moments, processes and relationships that allowed the architects to come into contact with a culture and a context so different from their own. Overall, this book is a story of embracing otherness, and a contemplation on how things meet"--Back cover.

This publication shows the ambitious transformation of Skanderbeg Square, in Tirana, Albania. The project was initiated by the then Mayor of Tirana and current Prime Minister of Albania Edi Rama and realized under current mayor Erion Veliaj. It is the result of a collaboration between Belgian architecture office 51N4E, Albanian artist Anri Sala, Belgian environmental designers Plant en Houtgoed, and Albanian company for project implementation iRI. Transforming the central square of a nation that is founded only in 1912 and that is now a developing young democracy, the project compresses all the hope and tension that come with that transition. With its focus on transition, this publication is a pilot episode of a series called Chapters, a progressive documentation of the work of architecture office 51N4E and its collaborations with related people and practices. Every Chapter combines the presentation of one or more projects with a forward-looking reflection on the key issues that shape them. Produced progressively over the course of the next years, the ambition of the whole series is to outline how 51N4E aims to engage with contemporary society in all of its complexity.

Elidor Mëhilli has produced a groundbreaking history of communist Albania that illuminates one of Europe’s longest but least understood dictatorships. From Stalin to Mao, which is informed throughout by Mëhilli’s unprecedented access to previously restricted archives, captures the powerful globalism of post-1945 socialism, as well as the unintended consequences of cross-border exchanges from the Mediterranean to East Asia. After a decade of vigorous borrowing from the Soviet Union—advisers, factories, school textbooks, urban plans—Albania’s party clique switched allegiance to China during the 1960s Sino-Soviet conflict, seeing in Mao’s patronage an opportunity to keep Stalinism alive. Mëhilli shows how socialism created a shared transnational material and mental culture—still evident today around Eurasia—but it failed to generate political unity. Combining an analysis of ideology with a sharp sense of geopolitics, he brings into view Fascist Italy’s involvement in Albania, then explores the country’s Eastern bloc entanglements, the profound fascination with the Soviets, and the contradictions of the dramatic anti-Soviet turn. Richly illustrated with never-before-published photographs, From Stalin to Mao draws on a wealth of Albanian, Russian, German, British, Italian, Czech, and American archival sources, in addition to fiction, interviews, and memoirs. Mëhilli’s fresh perspective on the Soviet-Chinese battle for the soul of revolution in the global Cold War also illuminates the paradoxes of state planning in the twentieth century.

Five years ago, Antoinette Nausikaä decided she wanted to observe mountains. In the middle of her frantic urban life she developed a need for stillness and solitude, and she was convinced that mountains were the place to go. Soon however, she discovered that "pure" silence and solitude were nowhere to be found. Looking for the timeless spirit of the mountains, she found fleeting traces of human existence everywhere. She lived and worked on and around eight ancient mountains in Europe and Asia, each one of them a sacred icon and a pilgrimage destination. She travelled to Mount Fuji (JP), Olympus (GR), Ararat (TR) and the five most sacred mountains in China, the Wŭyuè. She observed them, climbed them, photographed, made drawings and dug in the earth for clay to make small sculptures. And so, almost casually, her quest developed into an investigation and presentation of one of the most pressing philosophical themes of this moment: the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene, as interpreted by many authoritative contemporary philosophers, deals with the idea that man and nature are fundamentally separated. An idea that is a typical product of nineteenth-century Romanticism, but is now considered to be out-of-date. After all, our human presence is omnipresent, visible even in the geographical layers of the Earth.

Christian theology, like all forms of knowledge, thinking and practice, arises from and is influenced by the context in which it is done. In Doing Contextual Theology, Angie Pears demonstrates the radically contextual nature of Christian theology by focusing on five forms of liberation theology: Latin American Liberation Theologies; Black Theologies; Feminist Informed Theologies; Sexual Theologies; Body Theologies. Pears analyses how each of these asserts a clear and persistent link to the Christian tradition through The Bible and Christology and discusses the implications of contextual and local theologies for understanding Christianity as a religion. Moreover, she considers whether fears are justified that a radically contextual reading of Christian theologies leads to a relativist understanding of the religion, or whether these theologies share some form of common identity both despite and because of their contextual nature. Doing Contextual Theology offers students a clear and up-to-date survey of the field of contemporary liberation theology and provides them with a sound understanding of how contextual theology works in practice.