Project “Houses and People” – architectural masterpieces from Bulgarian villages

“Houses and People. Architectural Stories from Bulgarian Villages” is the name of a new project by two young architects who graduated from different universities in Germany. Elena Stoycheva and Georgi Nikolov are a creative duo working on a project that tells the story of rural houses, their caretakers, and the role of cultural heritage in Bulgaria. They are united by the idea that in small Bulgarian villages and towns there are hundreds of houses that can be called architectural masterpieces, distinctive for their beautiful, sometimes painted façades and for the ornaments that give them a distinct character and charm. These include houses from the 1920s and 1930s built in the styles of classicism and Art Nouveau. There are also older ones, such as traditional Bulgarian wooden houses, stone houses, and others.

Elena and Georgi want to show and share the spirit of these houses with as many people as possible. This led to the idea of a travelling audiovisual exhibition, hosted on the platform ruralheritage.bg.

“Sometimes this makes us very sad, because we see that we are losing something we consider very valuable—our shared heritage”, says architect Elena Stoycheva.

“The stories are told personally by the owners themselves. We call them ‘guardian people’, because they are individuals who invest time, effort, dreams, thoughts, and a love of beauty and detail in these buildings. Thus, they preserve them from the decay of time. We have been working on the Rural Heritage project for several years. We travel through villages and take photos of houses that we find and consider very beautiful, although they are not cultural monuments. They represent a more common type of architecture that is currently being rapidly lost and deteriorating. We come across a better-maintained house here and there, and we ask ourselves who is behind this beautiful and well-cared-for façade, who these people are and how they manage to do it. Together with my colleague Georgi Nikolov, we started the project “Houses and People”. We want to see the human side of things, to look behind the façades, to learn about the stories of the people who live there now, what they know about previous generations, and so on.”

In other countries, there are more restrictive approaches—if a building is not maintained by its owner, it can even be acquired by the state or regional authorities and restored. But in Bulgaria, many things depend on the capacity and will of the owner, and often there are multiple owners, with no one taking responsibility for the shared property. As a result, valuable architectural heritage is lost, said the authors of the project “Houses and People.”

Traveling across the country, the two architects often come across good examples as well, which raise the question of what motivates these people to maintain old houses in this way. “This is how the idea was born to show the positive examples as well. We collected seven stories, and to our delight the owners of well-preserved houses trusted us, opened up to us, and shared their personal stories”, says architect Georgi Nikolov about the project “Houses and People.”

''We have a house in Novo Selo, in northwestern Bulgaria, which is 100 years old. The grandfather was a prominent merchant, an entrepreneurial man who was involved in wine trade. In the lower part of the house, he kept large barrels of wine and even transported wine across the Danube, trading with Austria. In the village of Balgarski Izvor, we filmed an extremely interesting house.

 While driving on the road to Veliko Tarnovo, we had noticed a very beautiful house that was not being maintained. Then, on a later trip, we saw the house shining white. We contacted the owners and learned their story. Their great-grandfather was one of the volunteers at Shipka. After returning to Balgarski Izvor, he became mayor and, together with like-minded people, founded the community cultural center (chitalishte). This spirit of creating something beautiful in the village has been preserved. It is visible in the façade and the desire to make the house shine again, driven by a strong family history. This house stands out from all the others with very special and unique elements. The building is 126 years old, and the window frames have been preserved since its construction. In addition to being a residential building, part of it also functioned as a small hotel—an inn with a tavern. These roadside inns were places of communication for people 100 years ago'', said Georgi Nikolov.

The project documenting and showcasing “Houses and People” continues, and the creative duo has set a goal of filming 10 more villages by the end of the year. Photos from these locations will also be added to the Rural Heritage page. The project “Houses and People” is implemented with the financial support of the “Cultural Heritage” program of the National Culture Fund.

Translated by Kostadin Atanasov