Danish architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) has won a competition to design Faith Park, a 200,000-square-metre park on a hillside near Tirana, Albania. The project features nine pavilions, each dedicated to a distinct spiritual tradition.
The park will be arranged as a “genealogical tree of faith,” with paths branching from a starting point in the valley and converging into three main routes. Visitors will move through gardens, olive groves, and terraced slopes toward nine pavilions positioned at the ends of individual paths.
Each pavilion will use materials symbolising its spiritual and geographic roots: the Christian structure in coloured Italian marble, the Jewish pavilion in Jerusalem limestone, a sandstone mosaic for Islam, and a combination of granite, onyx, marble, and river-polished stone for the Dharmic and East Asian traditions.
At the park’s entrance, a Museum of Remembrance will include a garden surrounded by nine rammed-earth structures arranged in a circular formation.
The project aims to “transform interfaith harmony into a tangible experience through nature,” using “symbolic elements shared across major religions—expressed through trees, fruits, and flowers mentioned in sacred scriptures” to foster “reflection, tranquillity, and cultural interaction,” according to the Albanian government.
Prime Minister Edi Rama said: “I wish we had the opportunity to create more parks like this.”
BIG prevailed over 12 finalists from the UK, Portugal, Denmark, Germany, Spain, Mexico, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Italy.
“In the time of the Anthropocene, when our removal from nature and our impact on the planet have become so substantial and so damaging, we must return to our common roots—to begin worshipping our natural environment, our ecosystem, our shared planet that we call home,” said Bjarke Ingels, BIG’s creative director.
“In that sense, it feels almost inevitable that the Park of Faith—organised like a livable, inhabitable evolutionary tree of faith mapped onto the natural topography of a mountain, connecting the valley to the summit, the earth to the heavens, and rooted in respect for nature—is a project the world is longing for, whether we know it yet or not,” he added.
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