I recently showed you the buildings in the center of two cities, for comparison. Now I want to show you two different types of residential buildings in a single city - in the second one.
Because the difference is huge again. And only within and as far as only one city is concerned.
Not because there are no such great contrasts in other cities. Not because the settlements in Bulgaria are not all built of contrasts - of old and new buildings, of even older and even newer. But because here we are talking about buildings built only within a century, only within one era, one regime, one culture, one ideology. And yet, they are completely different.
First came these buildings, built in the middle of the previous century:
(Yeah, I know, they may look familiar to you, just because I've already shown you some of them.)
These palaces, built for the working-class people.
But notice the details.
I especially like the keystones over all the windows and entrances of this particular building.
They reinforce the sense of royalty and splendor that was once probably wanted to be instilled.
Now these keystones stand on them pretty ridiculous.
But don't judge me for showing you these buildings now. I'm just showing you one type of building designed for living in this particular city.
So, did you notice the height of the cladding with these huge stones already falling to the ground?
This level is pretty high and I suppose that also suggests majesty.
And I also guess that maybe nowadays it will not be possible to find a person with the right skills and qualifications to repair this building.
If a repair will ever be made.
Or people here will live in the buildings until they are completely destroyed.
Well, at least they have flowers.
(Behind nets or not - as you can see in the first and in other pictures.)
And this could be kind of compensation. A compensation for their lives, a substitute for some things. Because you know how calming vegetation can be on people.
And especially the flowers. When you miss the beauty of life, just one flower - a compensator for this lack, can mean a lot. Or everything.
Then come the next living buildings, built, according to the information I received, in the 70s and 80s - the Plattenbau.
Here I can not imagine how many flowers the inhabitants need to compensate for the prevailing ugliness.
Personally, I have never had the opportunity to even cross the threshold of any of these monumental apartment buildings that I showed you above. I don't even know there are similar ones in any other city in the country, except here. That's why I don't know them and I have no idea what they look like from the inside, or what it's like to live in them.
But I definitely know what it's like to live in a plattenbau block. Or even in an apartment building built of bricks - you will probably say that a building built of bricks is much better than a panel. But this is not the case when you are in a country like Bulgaria. With the coming to power of the communist regime, the quality of production in the country declined sharply. So I can say that the buildings I showed you above are probably the only manifestation of quality in this country at that time.
Yes, I know that plattenbau is not a communist invention, but we, the people of the former communist countries, will always associate it with this regime, because it appeared in the country and developed at that time. Besides, it looks ugly, as was usually the invention at the time.
A campaign (with EU support) is under way today to renovate and insulate all these ugly buildings. And they definitely need that.
(Yes, some of them seem to have been built more recently than others.)
Well, somewhere between these two types of residential buildings in this particular city, there are others, I forgot to mention:
Some two or more storey, single-family or multi-family houses, also built, it seems, in the last century.
My favorite remains the first buildings - unique constructions that I have seen only here.
Copyright: @soulsdetour
 | Soul's Detour is a project started by me years ago when I had a blog about historical and not so popular tourist destinations in Eastern Belgium, West Germany and Luxembourg. Nowadays, this blog no longer exists, but I'm still here - passionate about architecture, art and mysteries and eager to share my discoveries and point of view with you. |
