Tobacco City
Architects: Constantine Dimitrov and Alexander Mladenov
A disturbing tendency, in Plovdiv and the whole country as well, is people’s migration towards the capital, creating demographic and economic imbalance. The main reason for that is new work, education and a variety of entertainment. A short survey shows that young people in Plovdiv miss stage arts and diverse cuisine. Despite the tendency, Plovdiv market is the second biggest in Bulgaria with low competition and taxes, making it attractive for business. Tobacco city is the place where business can meet cultural heritage. The first step in developing business and preservation the heritage is to transform the territory into rea cognizable brand. Choosing the right program and target groups would relive the Tobacco city and would make it idan eological sequel to the Kapana. Kapana with its tight streets and spaces is suitable for arts, literature and crafts, but Plovdiv needs bigger stage spaces. The town needs an alternative entertainment spot. This is the reason why the target groups are young entrepreneurs, stage artists and ayliak people.
The proposal for the masterplan came out of the fact that the whole territory is a group and functions as such. A traditional approach would make a district witha building, each one with different function, with communication between the buildings on ground level. Our proposal is based on a building-district with floors that are connected to each other with bridges above ground, interpreting existing steel tunnels for the tobacco between the houses. The program is expanded from ground level towards the roof: stage arts, offices, restaurants and entertainment venues with gardens. Spaces between the buildings and inner courtyards are extensively green. Painting in white all the tobacco houses would distinguish them from all the other buildings in the district. Because of the fire, big parts of the roofs and floors are gone forever. We take the symbol of going back to life and propose roof gardens for urban farming on all the roofs.
We transform a part of Ivan Vazov Street, between Odrin Street and Avksentiy Veleshki Street, into a pedestrian zone – square. From there, through the new theatre, begins the development of stage arts program on ground level. The crossing of G.M.Dimitrov Street and Ekzarh Yosif Street is the place which has preserved the spirit and image of Tobacco city. That is why the interventions there are minimal and the aroma of the original tobacco processing, which has soaked in the walls, is preserved. There are only two streets for traffic but without parking spots – Avksentiy Veleshi Street and Tsanko Dyustabanov Street. All the other streets are pedestrian or shared. A parking building withan automatic system for 800 vehicles is serving the whole district. We propose a hotel on the lot of the Yug Bus Station which is a mirror accent of the high building owned by Bulgarian National Railway on the south. The Yug Bus Station is a source for intense traffic and we propose to merge it with Rodopi Bus Station which is next to the Railway Station.
In order to contact the authors: constantine.dimitrov@gmail.com
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