Affirmation, control, and enforcement are implicit in the very existence of building codes and urban regulations, regardless of the specific form of government. In Albania, during the Communist dictatorship from 1944 to 1991, this triad was especially strict. Once a building or a public space was constructed, any modification was virtually impossible. Even interior spaces were subject to the absolute control of the regime. After Albania was proclaimed an atheist country in 1967, party squads went door to door to collect and destroy religious objects. In such a context, removing a partition, adding a second toilet, or enclosing a balcony was almost unimaginable. Neighbourhood supervisors would have promptly informed Communist Party authorities of unauthorized construction activity, and those caught would have been punished.

Do-it-yourself modifications were prohibited in Albania because affirmation, the first component in the triad of regulation, was monopolized by architects and civil engineers. These professionals worked in large teams as public servants, following the principles of a Stalinist architectural style adopted by the regime in the late 1940s. Albania’s leader, Enver Hoxha, perceived de-Stalinization in the USSR as a potential threat to his own regime; consequently, architecture became the embodiment of the role of Albania as a surviving stronghold of Stalinism. Later, following isolationism, the classicist features of Stalinist architecture were dropped, but its principles still remained. When architects presented their projects to Party commissions, they were asked how the project contributed to the policies and ideology of the regime. Their answers had to be convincing. In 1978, architect Maks Velo was imprisoned for reflecting foreign influences in his work.

Following the collapse of Communism in the early 1990s, as former state-owned buildings were left without clear ownership, regulations were unable to be affirmed, controlled, and, if necessary, enforced. Suddenly, everything was possible, though resources were poor. It was a perfect set of conditions for spontaneous, ingenuous interventions on buildings by their own inhabitants, who became de facto owners of apartments they had lived in for years or decades. As collective property was privatized, residential architecture became a testing ground for an unplanned, turbo-capitalist experiment.

In the early years of the Communist regime, after the Second World War, the immediate priority was providing shelter for the population, with little care to living standards. In the 1960s, standards were improved, possibly as the result of the consolidation of design institutes under the direct control of the state. Typical designs of four- to six-floor apartment buildings were used to increase the housing stock all over the country. Since overcrowding of living units remained a problem, a concrete prefabricated panel system was introduced in the late 1970s, providing around two thousand apartments annually. While the construction system changed, the building typology and the apartments layout did not undergo significant innovations; the quality remained poor.