Round Table — Socialist Heritage: Heritage at Risk
Thursday 20 August 2015
Union of Architects in Bulgaria, ul. Krakra 11, 1504 Sofia
Organised by the Bulgarian National Committee of ICOMOS
The round table brought together architects, researchers, curators, citizens and politicians to reassess the architectural and monumental heritage of the socialist period. It was attended by representatives of the Union of Architects in Bulgaria and of ICOMOS, including members of the ISC20C SocHeritage working group. Two weeks later the group met again in Berlin — see the Berlin protocol.
What the meeting concluded
- A platform was needed. The experts present recommended building an ICOMOS website on SocHeritage, covering both Socialist Realism and Socialist Modernism, to serve as a supranational platform for documenting and discussing heritage at risk. This site is the result of that recommendation.
- A Heritage at Risk report. Participants asked ICOMOS to initiate and publish a special issue of its Heritage at Risk series on threatened post-war heritage in socialist and post-socialist countries.
- The discussion had to go multinational. There was agreement that the debate should continue on a wider scale, with the neighbouring post-socialist countries.
- Legal protection is not enough. The public must first be convinced of the value of this heritage, because protection by the state does not guarantee its conservation.
The main risks identified were the lack of public awareness of the value of this architecture, its association with a rejected regime, the polarisation of public opinion, and indifference.
Positions presented
Aneta Vasileva argued that shared sites of memory are not the same as shared memory, and that history holds neither victims nor executioners but ordinary people performing their roles; the rest is interpretation.
Prof. Todor Bulev spoke on urban development between 1944 and 1989 and on its ensemble approach, citing the town centres of Montana, Kardzhali, Blagoevgrad and Dimitrovgrad and the resorts of Duni and Albena. He supported the initiative as a bridge between generations.
Dr. Stela Tasheva, Institute of Art Studies of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, examined the national idea and socialist heritage, asking how a regime can set architecture.
Dr. Ljubinka Stoilova, founding member of DOCOMOMO Bulgaria and member of ISC20C, described the architecture of the second half of the twentieth century as international, and proposed considering socialist heritage together with the architecture of the first half of the century, which faces comparable risks.
Emilia Kaleva, co-organiser and member of ISC20C, set out the specific risks to Bulgarian socialist architecture.
Assoc. Prof. Maria Davcheva, editor-in-chief of Architecture magazine, turned to the Black Sea complexes of the period, pointing to Albena as a case where the synthesis of the arts was achieved and preserved, and to Sunny Beach as a total loss of value.
Stela Duleva presented the case of the Rilets hotel in the Rila Monastery area. Mariela Malamatenova, National Art Gallery, spoke on the making and the present condition of monumental artworks in the architectural environment.
Dumitru Rusu, ICOMOS Romania and ISC20C, presented four examples from the Republic of Moldova and showed that the risks there run parallel to the Bulgarian ones. Listing procedures for those four buildings in Chișinău were initiated the following year.
Prof. Jörg Haspel, director of the State Conservation Authority of Berlin and President of ICOMOS Germany, held that a bad system or a dictator does not produce bad architecture, and that socialist architectural heritage is a place of memory where opposing perspectives should meet. He noted that the UNESCO World Heritage List then held only two examples from the second half of the twentieth century, and that a balanced list should reflect achievements across typologies, chronologies and themes.
Delcho Delchev presented the project „Memoreality“, a new reading of the monument 1300 Years of Bulgaria in Sofia. Dora Ivanova, co-organiser, presented „Buzludzha — Memory of Time“, proposing that the monument be preserved in its present condition and used as a forum for art and history.
Programme
Opening — Assoc. Prof. Stefan Belishki, President of ICOMOS Bulgaria. Introduction of the participants and the context of the meeting — Arch. Emilia Kaleva.
Panel 1. The value and the need to preserve the architectural and artistic heritage of the socialist period
- Aneta Vasileva — Five points for a better understanding of post-socialist attitudes towards socialist architecture in Bulgaria: nationalism, totalitarianism, memory, identity, nostalgia
- Prof. Todor Bulev — The ensemble approach in Bulgarian architecture, 1944–1989
- Dr. Stela Tasheva — The national idea and socialist heritage
- Dr. Ljubinka Stoilova — Twentieth-century cultural heritage: rethinking and re-evaluation
Panel 2. Current problems and risks
- Emilia Kaleva — Specific current risks for Bulgarian socialist architecture
- Assoc. Prof. Maria Davcheva — In search of lost architectural masterpieces
- Stela Duleva — The Rilets hotel in the Rila Monastery region
- Mariela Malamatenova — Monumental art in the architectural environment, 1944–1989
Panel 3. Opportunities for protection and adaptation. Strategies, actions and initiatives to overcome the status quo
- Dumitru Rusu — Preservation of functional buildings from the Socialist Modernist period
- Prof. Jörg Haspel — The Socialist Heritage Initiative
- Delcho Delchev — The project „Memoreality“
- Dora Ivanova — The project „Buzludzha — Memory of Time“