The Andon Zako Chayupi Theater (1950) was a gift from the Soviet Union to the Albanian people and therefore demonstrated architectural forms characteristic of that time. After the cooling of relations between the two countries due to the XX Congress of the CPSU (in Albania they refused to condemn Stalin) and the subsequent rupture of them in 1961, the theater was rebuilt, having lost its neoclassical decor. Nowadays, he needed reconstruction.
Bolles + Wilson in 2009
won the competition for the master plan for the reconstruction of the historical core of Korcha, nowadays it is almost completely implemented. After the construction of a high-rise dominant, an observation tower, on Teatralnaya Square in 2014, its authors turned to the reconstruction of the theater building. The main axis of the general plan - the pedestrian boulevard Shön-Gergi - ends with this square, so it and its buildings play an important role in the renovated center of Korca.
During the reconstruction, the theater received new facades with two large masks - tragic and comic, as well as 140 small masks - spectators. The conventional character of this decor is reminiscent of the art of the "thaw", which seems to be a logical stage of development, given the origin and original appearance of the building. The tragic mask protruding from the plane of the wall on the main volume of the building is made of expanded polystyrene blocks and painted black, and a white comic mask, a plastered relief niche, is placed on an extension faced with basalt, inside of which there is a new front staircase. Small masks are made by the Albanian ceramist Vasillak Kolevitsa. The auditorium has increased its capacity by replacing the two-tiered arrangement of seats with a single "amphitheater".
During the implementation of the project, the main means of communication between local architects (DEA Studio from Tirana) and the builders were drawings by the hand of Bolles + Wilson partner Peter Wilson; with a tragic mask.
