Planning Capital Cities

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

Fig. 7
In the background of the Party House: the monumental place
between the former King’s Palace and the newly constructed
mausoleum displacing the court fence. (Reproduction,
Avramov)

Neykov-plan comes into action in 1961 due to its reconstruction principle.^19

The plan respects the historically formed urban composition and this provides

the chance for its preservation in the next decades when further ambitions

for a total reconstruction develop.^20 The concept for the intensive urbanism

developed in the Neykov-plan soon turns out to be not tenable. Just seven

years after the plan comes effective, the demographic prognoses is exceeded

and the reconstruction-concept proves to be unrealistic. The speed of growth

and the need of housing development in large scaled units shift the planning

attention to the city periphery. This tendency is strengthened by the import

of the new technologies in housing construction which are not effective in

inner-city locations. In fact Sofia’s urban development follows the ideas of the

not accepted Siromahov-plan. This is a contradiction which accompanies the

practice and the discussion for the next decades.

The urban core with its unfinished design moves as

an object of interest back in stage, when in 1963

an international competition for the reconstruction

of the main city centre is announced. Most of the

contributions continue developing the idea of the

east-west axis, born in the post-war largo-concept

and focus predominantly on the territories west of

the core.^21 The non-resistant building stock in these

territories induce the participants to offer large

scaled interventions and are examples of thorough

disrespect of the existing urban patterns. They

obliterate almost fully whole districts with valuable

places of social meaning including the Central Market

area.^22 The participants seem to be infatuated with

the ambition to demonstrate the new technological

abilities and to show off through a certain kind of

constructional gigantism.^23 The projects express

the ambitious vision for the great structural

change, owning the intellectual world in the 1960s

internationally. The call for far-reaching changes soon

becomes unrealistic because of the speed slacken

of the economic development. The expectations

are very soon out dated and the disappointment

is inevitable. In the following years numerous

alternative master plans for the reconstruction of the

center are elaborated, communicating the message

of determinism, but they do not offer convincing

solutions.^24 They describe static images of the future,

not offering phase-wise realization possibilities.

The gradual evolution of the concept for the urban

core becomes of special interest in the 1970s, after