The pink book
The German artists and architects Martin Kaltwasser and Maik Ronz developed a concept for building a structure at the Maritsa riverbank adjacent to Stolipinovo. The Goethe-Institut Bulgaria took over this great idea and invited Bulgarian partners to adopt and realize it in cooperation with participants from the local Roma neighbourhood. The project ‘aimed at creating new connections between the neighbourhood and the rest of the city, literally and symbolically’. So now, already in 2020, we may ask: did it come true?
The green book
The project Building Together: Children’s City, realized in 2019 in Plovdiv, applied formats of children’s participation in architectural design and model making well established in global practice over the past thirty years. This project and our experience with architectural workshops for children over the last ten years helped us summarize several useful guidelines for the development of Built Environment Education in Bulgaria.
"Atelie3” are the architects Donika Georgieva, Miroslav Velkov and Dessislava Kovacheva and they will show us how we can "build together". Over the next 6 months, they will host a series of urban and architectural workshops where participants can experience what it really means to work together and learn from each other.
When we talk about Stolipinovo, we usually overlook the various crafts and skillful craftsmen, working there. Together with them the architects of "Atelie-3" will organize a series of open workshops in which various structures, urban furniture, facilities for children and small interventions will get built. Participants in the workshops will be the residents of Stolipinovo, as well as all who want to join in "building together", develop their own ideas of alternative architecture and, with the help of the craftsmen, try and expand their skills.
The “Architectural Workshop for Children” will take care of the children`s program from the project “Building Together”. A Team of architects, led by Magdalina Rajeva and Anna Kalinova, will guide the children`s architectural journey from a dream school to a City of Children. Maggie and Anni believe that architecture has an important role in the educational process. It stimulates creative thinking, technical skills, physical activity and teamwork – a diverse spectrum only few other disciplines can cover.
In the following months, the Youth Hill in Plovdiv will become a “Childrens’ City” – designed after children’s ideas and built by themselves. The “Architectural Workshop for Children” will offer a number of workshops for children of different ages. With the help of architects and entirely ecological and recycled materials, they will be able to build various temporary structures on the Youth Hill. From benches to small pavilions which will become a playground, but also the embodiment/realisation of their ideas of what a real city of children looks like.
