Destigmatizing Albania’s bunker architecture and repurposing the structures on a regional scale. Karaburun peninsula-Sazan Island-Narta Lagoon case study.

An estimated 130,000-750,000 bunkers are located and scattered across Albania at this moment with no real use and a stinging stigma against them, strongly related to the communist regime that makes them unwanted structures at a large scale. The prevalence of these bunkers is ignored and the opportunity to turn them into something other than an ugly scar is overlooked, thus calling for a better study of their patterns, typologies and regional arrangement in order to repurpose them and gift them new diverse functions related to their context, in service to the people and to the collective memory. Taking into account the 2026 protests across Albania regarding the controversial resort developments, strategic investors and changes in natural habitat protection laws, the bunkers are still not being considered as a potential candidate for adaptive reuse. Instead of introducing new interventions within protected natural areas, these existing military structures could be repurposed to provide functional amenities for both tourists and local communities while minimizing the impact on sensitive ecosystems.