Planning Capital Cities

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

alongside the ring-road and to keep the urban core as a business and trade

zone. The aim is now the opposite: to neglect the bourgeois urban heritage and

to replace it by the symbols of the communist ideology.

No first prize is awarded after the competition, so D. Mitov and P. Tashev are

entrusted directly with the plan elaboration. The steps of planning reflect the

arising influence of the ideology. The initial concept is corrected several times

in the sense of the socialist realism, not at least with the support of invited

Soviet experts.^10 The authorities’ imperative requirement for the architecture

of the buildings is to be “national in form and socialist in content”, a typical

formulation related to the “socialist realism”.^11 The master plan follows the

principles of the urban design of the Stalinist era. The created space doesn’t

aim meeting the real social and functional needs and doesn’t leave any chances

for a free interpretation, not to mention the fact that it doesn’t allow any

utilization possibilities. The ensemble in the urban core organises the social

space vertically in its entirety and implements a decidedly hierarchy, which

subordinates the individual wishes under the collective power. The urban core

changes to a disciplining organism aiming to shape the view of life horizon in a

way that the individual view is locked up.^12

The master plan contents some general solutions which define the image of

the urban core ultimately. The plan re-organises totally the inherited urban

Fig. 4
The realised eastern part of
the monumental post-war
ensemble. (Doytchinov/Petev)