Bio : Born 1969 in Dobrich, Bulgaria. Lives and works in Sofia, Bulgaria.
Description : A leisure park is in the periphery of the city of Sofia (the Northern Park, Nadezhda district) in a typical working-class neighbourhood. The unique spatial composition is the result of urban planning and the mode of thinking of the socialist engineer, dating from 1983. It is a bizarre concoction of romantically artificial (planned) hillocks and military strategies. The hillocks are well organized and cut across by canals and ponds which are linked by nostalgic curved footbridges. The highlights of the architectural ensemble are the prop-like tanks, rockets, military airplanes and canons, which are arranged as on a battlefield. All these items are made of modules manufactured from the same material: metal tubes which are painted in the basic colours – yellow, red and blue. These are facilities for children’s play – one of the fanciful remnants of ideological urban planning. It is amazing the scale on which people visit the park, every weekend the playground is filled with families with children unaware of the tragic metaphor they so actively participate in.