Authors

Discussion

This paper focuses on the advocacy of Bulgarian architects for the preservation of the architectural heritage of the recent denounced past which picked up steam from the late 1960s onwards. Architects’ engagement with the issue of cultural heritage and heritage preservation coincided with their union’s gaining relative organizational autonomy as of 1965. No longer under direct state supervision, the Union of Architects in Bulgaria embarked on becoming a partner to the relevant state institutions in the decision-making process concerning urban planning and public architecture, eventually replacing political dogmatism with technical expertise. While architects’ expectations to have a say were time and again disappointed, the professional corporation did not cease its endeavors to boost architects’ social agency and relevance. The issue of the architectural heritage stigmatized as “bourgeois-monarchic” became a corollary stake of this corporate struggle for recognition. The preservationist cause promoted by architects eventually became a platform to articulate their vision of expert-driven urban design and to seek the support of citizens. Consequently, architects’ defense of contested architectural heritage became an essntial part of their comprehensive vision of both urban planning and professional ethos, often entwined with other urban or professional issues they engaged with.

Reviewing the vivid debates on architectural heritage initiated by the Sofia branch of the Union of Architects in Bulgaria in the late 1960s and 1970s, I will specifically discuss two different preservationist positions which reflect an interesting generational rift within the architects’ society and thus bring more nuance into the history of their professional consolidation. The first one subordinated heritage preservation to a defense of authorship of the architectural product; heritage was thus discussed alongside issues of professional identity and collegial solidarity transcending political divides or historical junctures. The second position which united a younger cohort of architects linked cultural protection to environmental protection defending the rights not of the author but of the user of architecture. Reconstructing the arguments of these two preservationist currents, this paper will also shed light into the objectives and dynamics of corporate identity building within the architects’ society – specifically, its attempts to reclaim the area of urban development as one to be steered by expertise instead of ideology.