Planning Capital Cities

Sofia before World War II: urban design as a cultural implication

The European urbanism reaches Bulgaria not before

after the Liberation in 1878. The inherited shape of

the Ottoman settlements cannot be attributed to

artistic or theoretic concepts. They are composed

of the relatively autonomous unites, the “mahalas”,

formed to relationships. The amorphous shape of

the primitive Ottoman settlement follows organically

the topography. The dividing interstices between the

mahalas are narrow lanes which branch out in short

dead end ways. The lane fronts are formed by the

irregular and broken plot limitations. The Ottoman

system causes a peculiarity: the lack of public places.

The one and only public space is the market or the

accidental space extension on some street junctions.

The urban shape is an anonymous work and the

individual interests agree upon with the public once

intuitively. The first vague changes start after 1800,

when the social life, limited before to the mahalas

starts searching for public expression and is enriched

with new functions. Some regulation activities during

the Ottoman rule dated to the 1860s^17 result from

practical needs and cannot be seen as a systematic

urbanism.

The pent-up energy of the Bulgarian bourgeoisie causes after the Liberation a

rapid spiritual and material impetus and is asking for a relevant urban model.

The radical civilisation choice of the politics and the lack of domestic experts

lead consequently to the implementation of foreign models. The political and

intellectual elite are conscious of the necessity of their implementation, but

it is often accompanied by a lack of understanding from the majority of the

population. In this sense the implemented models have to be considered with

a pre-modern genius loci, presented by the ethnically and religiously separated

communities of the “mahalas”. As a result of this meeting of contradictions, a

specifically composed urban heritage in the meaning of the Nara Document on

Authenticity is formed.^18

The first signs of a planned building up of the settlements are the works of

foreign topographers, technicians and engineers.^19 The establishing of the

administration of the Principality of Bulgaria and the Province of Eastern

Rumelia goes hand in hand with the assembling of the first municipal technical

departments. The work begins with the triangular and polygon networking of

the settlements, followed by cadastres. Just three years after the Liberation, the

Decree for Regulation of the Private Buildings in the Towns becomes effective.

It regularizes the position of the chief architect and the chief engineer.^20 The

absence of educated domestic technical staff orders the Direction of Public

Buildings, the later Ministry, to open a two-years-school for geodesy. Very soon

Fig. 3
An image of Sofia documented by Oberbauer around 1880.
(Museum of Sofia)