Planning Capital Cities

directions are missing. The crest-based space composition is in contradiction to

basic principles known from the history of urbanism. Moreover the shape of the

new designed place doesn’t show any correspondence with the topography. It

dismisses totally the human scale and offers therefore the image of a left over

field. The ensemble is never finished on the western site, which strengthens its

character of an undefined and unorganised, transitional space. The fact that

the initial concept proposes the demolishing of the Sv. Nedelya Church and

the Bania Bashi Mosque speaks about a totally deductive planning approach,

obliged to the ideological symbols and not respecting at minimum the human

expectations and perceptions.

The dictate of the socialist realism is of short duration. The political changes

in Bulgaria in 1956 cause a prompt revival of the rationality of the modernistic

urbanism. The 1960s can be characterised as the “heroic” period of the

“pathetic” defence of the modernistic values.^15 Their deterministic character

seems to be now the right instrument for the rapid realisation of the new

device: the high living standard.^16 For protecting the longevity of the political

system the utopian dream is getting replaced by the materialistic one on a

hidden but decisive way.^17 The urbanism is seen as the prolongation of the

social policy and as an instrument of its realisation. The tendency towards

Fig. 5
The aerial view from the 1920s
shows the former ensemble
of the King’s Palace, the
Town Garden with the palace
court fence in between. In
the background: the urban
core destroyed in WW II. The
post-war plans foresee the
abolishment of the fence and
the creation of a monumental
place. (Archive Ganchev)

Designing Sofia’s city core in the context of the changing ideological paradigm 1945-1989