Incubator for Urban Change – a hub for urban and cultural development in Bulgaria
Implementation period
01.05.2024 – 30.04.2025
The project “Incubator for urban change – a hub for urban and cultural development in Bulgaria” is funded by the Lachezar Tsotsorkov Foundation. The statements and opinions expressed herein are solely those of The Collective Foundation and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Lachezar Tsotsorkov Foundation or its partners.
Project Description:
In the framework of the project we implemented a number of activities that encouraged youth engagement and gave new life to passive urban spaces. We brought together students, professionals and experts to create an active community dedicated to urban transformation.
We adapted the space for the Incubator, which became a hub for trainings, workshops and events aimed at solving real urban case studies. We held fundraising and community outreach trainings that provided participants with practical skills to implement cultural and architectural projects.
The Incubator gave us a space for regular meetings with young architects and students from UASG, who put emphasis on initiatives in the village of Belish and the town of Troyan. Our collaboration with them led to the successful realization of the first-ever festival “Above-Below”, which took place in August in both places.
We also worked on the revival of the residence in Bankya: a series of meetings of architects were held in the Incubator in connection with the idea of restoring the residence. They resulted in a public exhibition of restoration projects.
The annual meeting of the Bulgarian team of the International Architecture Student Network -EASA was also held in the space. The students presented their interpretations of the topic of plagiarism in architecture and skyscrapers as a person: See more
Since mid-May, the Incubator has also hosted “Club Smisal” meetings in relation to the future of water resources in the capital. This has led to the production of a short documentary, which is due to premiere in December. Another outcome was the development of a project under Programme “Europe” 2024 from Sofia Municipality to map the Perlovska River and address its sustainable management, as well as the challenges with unnamed rivers and tributaries that are missing from the cadastre.
The Incubator also hosted meetings with the team from the international company 3M, with whom we worked on creating urban furniture from recycled materials.
On October 30, we organized a community event where we talked openly about what are successful practices for engaging communities and what we have learned so far from the trial-and-error model. We presented innovative approaches and advocacy campaigns that can help build sustainable and active communities and engaged participants in the discussion. Our guest speakers were Mircho Hristov from The Collective, Marin Markovski from Belish Residence, Ioana Stoyanova from Ideas Factory, Konstantin Kostov from Atelier 11:11, Monika Simeonova from TimeHeroes, and Katerina and Anna-Maria Andreeva from Return to Bulgaria.
Within three days, the Incubator also hosted an urban environment lab, where young students and enthusiasts from different specialties in architecture, urbanism, art and design developed their ideas for two locations – the schoolyard of NGDEK and a parking lot in the northern part of Sofia city center. We looked at how these spots could expand their functions and transform from “grey asphalted areas” into more active and useful spaces for the community.
