Boxes of Empathy & Metanoia in Civic Architecture
I hold a Master’s degree in Architecture from the University of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Geodesy (UACEG) in Sofia, followed by postgraduate training in BIM-based construction project optimization. In the current period I attend Heritage course - collaboration between Bulgarian Ministry of Culture and Ecole de Chaillot. My academic and professional path bridges two scales: the material precision of digital modeling and the symbolic, social relevance of architectural memory in post-socialist urban contexts.
My current research is rooted in the potential of chitalishta—UNESCO-listed community-run cultural centers as civic typologies of empathy, intergenerational exchange, and micro-spatial care. In parallel with my design work on large-scale investment projects, I have engaged in field-based heritage initiatives, including educational visits to the village of Dolen, seminars with the Bulgarian Memory Foundation, and studies in Bulgarian modernism. I am also interested in insular and atmospheric architecture, environmental psychology, and cultural infrastructure as a form of soft power. I see writing and design as parallel tools for advocacy, and I seek to contribute critically to how architecture mediates identity, care, and coexistence.
In an age of cognitive overload, fragmented attention, and environmental instability, architecture in post-socialist cities is tasked not just with shaping form, but with repairing fractured social ecologies. This project explores the Bulgarian chitalishte - a UNESCO-recognized, self-organized civic institution as a micro-architectural prototype of empathetic space. With over 3,600 across Bulgaria (140+ in Sofia), these “boxes of empathy” serve as infrastructures for informal education, intergenerational memory, and intercultural connection. Though many are physically deteriorating, they retain the latent capacity to act as spatial catalysts for trust and care, particularly in marginalized and multiethnic districts.
Framed through neurodivergent spatial needs and cognitive urbanism, the research proposes that small-scale interventions such as temporary furniture, sensory zones, affective signage, and mobile installations - can be implemented legally under current Bulgarian planning codes, allowing for tactical, permit-free adaptations of the civic realm. Drawing from Scandinavian models like Denmark’s Empathy in Urban Schooling programme, which maps emotion onto urban form, the project combines ethnographic site readings with spatial cognition research (e.g. Bafna & Hölscher, 2021) to reimagine chitalishte-adjacent environments as affective territories.
Fieldwork includes sites in Sofia such as Lyulin, Krasna Polyana, and Student City, where grassroots initiatives have reactivated neglected cultural centers as hubs for hybrid pedagogy, creative placemaking, and community resilience. Historical examples like Slavyanska Beseda in the 1940s or the Aleko Konstantinov center during post-war recovery -further anchor the typology as both spatial and symbolic mediator.
This project asks: Can we design empathy without aesthetic?Can planning accommodate softness, ambiguity, and repair? And can overlooked civic architectures offer paths toward more inclusive urban futures?