After 30 years of transition, Albania still aspires to a new culture of spatial planning. Its main planning strategies thus far have resulted in notions like the ‘vaporized city’, ‘informal city’, and ‘archipelago city’, offering a rather clear insight into how Albania’s main cities have developed up until now. While politicians repeatedly invite international architects to participate in prestige projects that are hardly ever realized, Albanian architects have meanwhile developed a rich palette of answers to deal with pop-up peripheries and leftover plots in the city centre. In this instalment, we focus on the projects and ambitions that have recast Albania into a fascinating laboratory of urban concepts.