structure around “Turgovska” street and “Dondukov” boulevard. The so called
“communication fork”, predestined to locate the Party House in a dominant
position is established. The concept of the symmetric main representative axes
(the “largo”) in front of the Party House emerges for the first time. The largo is
flanked by the buildings of the government, the presidency, the representative
hotel and the central universal shop. The westward extension of the largo
is planned to be finished with the monumental building of the House of the
Soviets which is not realised. The plan brings some basic changes concerning
the space organisation in the north-south axes too: The two traditional public
places around the Sv. Nedelya Church and around the Bania Bashi Mosque
and the Central Batch are unified to a large scaled open space by demolishing
of the separating block. The collected north-south space is subordinated to
the representative largo. Moreover the urban design intends to demolish the
emblematic buildings of the Sv. Nedelya Church and the Bania Bashi Mosque,
and once again the King’s Palace. Fortunately the ideas about demolishing the
objects are not realised.
The conservation and exposing of the archaeological findings from the antiquity
and the medieval times play a subordinated role as well. The architects succeed
in preserving the unique antique complex of Sv. Georg Church and the small Sv.
Petka Samardzijska Church, but a lot of the archaeological remains falling under
the new buildings are lost. Despite of the anti-historic approach, the possibility
to expose parts of the antique heritage is used for the first time in the city’s
history. Tough it is just a remaining stock saved during the construction activities,
the contours of a future conservation and preservation policy become visible.
It is a signal for the later on designed underground pedestrian pass ways in
the beginning of the 1960s, which integrate the archaeology and the antique
patterns in the everyday life.
It is surprising that in the Bulgarian professional literature the master plan for
the representative centre has rarely been an object of professional criticism.
The critics arising after the change of the political paradigm in 1956 are directed
generally to the eclectic style of the socialist realism, its questionable formalism,
its functional and financial weaknesses, but do not touch the urbanism. Even
the authors of the plan limit the presentation just on the architecture describing
it as “monumental and corresponding to the scale of the capital”.^13 Apart from
defending the symmetric street fork as “one and only possible and logic”
the authors do not engage with argumentation for the urban plan solution.^14
It doesn’t make sense now to criticise the principles of the socialist realism
from the position of the distance in time. The ensembles marking the period
are nowadays accepted as historic documents and set under preservation as
monuments of culture. But the urban concept even today provokes some basic
professional, non-ideological questions not answered up to now: As a result
of the intervention an open space is finally created based on an east-west and
north-south directed crest-composition. With exception of the eastern axes
rendering the Party House prominent, the arguments for the other space axes
Grigor Doytchinov