AbstractsGrigor Doytchinov
Designing Sofia’s city core in the context of the changing ideological
paradigm 1945-1989The three main periods defining the shape of Sofia’s city core today are the
city establishing during the rain of the Roman emperors from the 1st to the
4 th century, the dynamic decades after the independence year 1878, and the
reconstruction phase after WW II. The colonial policy of the Roman Empire and
the Christianization is of great importance for the establishing of the centrality
of Sofia. The cross point setting of Cardo and Decumanus is sustainable over
the centuries and marks the city core even today. The nomination for capital
city, 1878, and the first planning activities are a symbolic expression of the
intellectual energy oppressed for centuries. The first after-liberation plans
establish the city core as a trade and business zone.
The bombardments 1943 and the imposing of the Soviet type of ideological
paradigm causes a portentous break in the urban continuity. The claim of the
communist ideology for exclusiveness and the refusal of the historic background
leave traces in the urban image. The change of the ideological paradigm in 1956
is followed by the shift of the urbanism activities to Sofia’s periphery and the
fate of the city core.
The policy of preservation and socialization of the cultural heritage bear
since the 1970s specific ideological contradictions and support the revival of
the complexity of the discipline of urbanism. The period is characterized by
controversial ideas for the urban development of the city core. A contrast
arises between the determinism of the urbanism methods of the socialist
modernity and the arising desire for context and emotion, expressed best
by the realization of the pedestrian zones in the urban core. The crisis of the
socialism in Bulgaria is dominantly caused by the gap between the intentions
for a complex and harmonious environment and the reality. The helpless of the
urbanism is on of the precursors of the political crises in the 1980s.