Toplocentralata Cultural Center
Conversion of the former heating plant of the National Palace of Culture into a Cultural Center.
2nd prize.
It takes way more than filling a neglected building with cultural program, to create an actual and foremost cultural counterpoint for Sofia.
The competition for the rehabilitation of the former heating plant of the NDK is a unique opportunity to shape Sofia’s relation with both cultural and socialistic heritage. The proposal aims to address these opportunities and formulates a statement. What should be the link between a cultural program and the city, the people, the history and the future? Rather than approaching the question with nostalgia, the project uses the historical features to create a key point for Sofia’s culture, mixing a shell from the past with forward moving culture.
Тhe project is housed in the former heating plant of NDK. Abandoned for years, only the true essence of the prefabricated architecture was spared by the passing time - robust, concrete, generous and light spaces. This existing condition is the ideal canvas for any ambitious cultural project. To offer these prerequisites to the public, the program has to be treated with caution. It should not become an obstacle and deny the possibilities offered by the historical context.
Reorganizing the program opens a wide new perspective to the cultural hub. Reworking the program allows the building to keep it’s mutable appeal for the future generations, for the evolution of culture but also the present creative process. No barriers, no limits. The program is condensed in it’s most functional and utilitarian form in several small volumes opening up the space for free and diverse culture inside and outside the building, making it’s surroundings part of the process.
Physically the discourse is translated into an efficient generous, yet cheap intervention on the existing structure.
The condensed fixed program is housed in playful volumes allowing permeable views throughout the whole building. They also allow the space to be used in as many ways as possible. Cheap poly-carbonate clads the structure with only the most basic intervention, keeping the building’s distinct identity, diffusing light to the spaces inside and playing with the moving context from the outside.
Тhe existing structure houses the program in almost a natural way. From the former entrance transformed in the new entrance area to the main volume housing the vast lecture/exhibition/performance hall and two newly created levels of back stage area.
The sunken in volume nested in the man made topography accommodates the administration, small hall, and cafe, accessible by an inviting newly created depression (stair) in the landscape. The newly created level above the entrance area houses the rest of the ambitious program in a contemporary yet coherent extension, marking and announcing the heating central’s new function. In order to link this new program with the larger context of the city the proposal adds another layer, a plus to the program.
On top of the heating central’s roof, a signal, a light bulb dispersing culture through the park at night while the open air cinema screens on the facade. this light pneumatic structure houses another performance space, thus becoming the new identity of the space. This performance balloon also acts as an ambassador. A moving part of the rigid structure, being transported from place to place to spread knowledge and culture around the country and abroad.
