trakiya

The residential neighborhood on the east end of Plovdiv will be the focus of the first part and possibly all of my research.

защо (why?)

Trakiya is composed of socialist bloc apartment buildings.  It was master planned in the early 1970’s as a prime example of a socialist residential planning built to house the mass migrations of people from the villages to the city during the industrialization of communism.

 

CONSTRUCTION

Panelki (panels) are apartments composed of a series of reinforced concrete panels.  They were designed in coded floorplan units that contained various layouts of apartments ranging from 2 to 6 per unit, and each apartment designed to house a specific family situation.  Each unit was stacked vertically (up to 8 floors was what the structure allowed), to create a ‘vhod’ (entry).  Each vhod attaches to itself along either axis, sometimes in a straight line, other times stepping along the landscape.  The conglomoration of vhods creates a bloc.

For instance, the bloc I am currently living in is a floorplan unit containing 5 apartments, there are 4 vhods, and 6 floors.  My specific apartment occurs 24 times in our block.

 

CULTURE

We refer to our apartments in conversation by vhod, floor, and then the layout, naming the rooms it contains, as we all know very well the 5 apartments our unit consists of.  No one is introduced to me in conversation with out this accompanying identification code.

There are two types of inhabitants:  Owners and Renters.

 

MEANS

Compare and contrast how people have individualized these apartments built in collective times.

Because many of these people came from the villages, many cultural things here were new.