The Veil

The Veil is a landscape-led resort and residential community by Bofill Taller de Arquitectura on two plots above the village of Dhërmi, on the Albanian Riviera where the Ceraunian mountains drop into the Adriatic. Rather than cut the hillside, the architects settle the buildings onto platforms that follow the existing contours, routing the plan around mature trees and vegetation so the ensemble reads, in the practice's words, as a light veil laid over the landscape. The programme runs to 366 apartments and 77 villas across sixteen typologies, hotel pavilions, and a principal communal building holding a social club, restaurant, gym and pools. A locally quarried stone base anchors the composition, above which concrete and glazed ceramic tile facades are tuned to a four-tone palette sampled from the surrounding terrain; volumes are linked by exterior stairs, bridges and walkways that turn circulation into a sequence of open squares and terraces. Deep balconies, large windows and private pools throughout orient almost every unit toward the sea.