The romance behind the train stations or else?

Which one of these awakens the butterflies in the stomach when you hear trains, train station? Or is it the journey, the kiss goodbye or something else?

I struggle to find my associations with train stations before I started this graduation work. 

I think at first it was with love 

remember all the romantic scenes in the movies?

Later an association with adventures, guitars, dirty songs and misery:

 During my travels around Bulgaria - going hiking, climbing and caving.

Later - an association with Corruption and the Bulgarian Mafia - after the scandal around the Architectural Contest for renovation of the Central Station in Sofia. Very ugly story I watched closely in support of my teacher back then - Emil Popov. It was the first time I saw the dirty business side of architecture.

Later - an association with idealism and fear for Bulgaria's future - from the book Atlas shrugged by Ayn Rand. Where the Railways are the foundation of a country's economy and the result of man's brain and fare labor. 

Later - an association with my struggle for making one of the oldest and most beautiful railway stations in Bulgaria into something well-organized and functioning and modern.

Later - an association with Corruption and the Bulgarian Mafia in the face of TIM - looking at the city of Varna - the closed shops, empty streets (in August!) and misery.

Today - an association with back pain from my last train trip to Varna (7 hours).

So no butterflies in the belly now. Only bugs in the brain asking why I should waste time making a project for a building no one's going to invest in when the trains barely get from one point to another in one piece.

History of the railway station in Varna

History

The railway station in Varna is one of the first stations in Bulgaria. Nowadays the building is declared a local cultural property. It was build based on the project for the railway station in Burgas so the 2 have the same project with slight differences - topic of my graduation work.
Construction started in 1907 and finished in 1925. It's a key station in the country with routes to Sofia, Ruse, Pleven, Karnobat, Shumen and was also part of the Orient Express route.

The plan is in the form of  "L" letter leaving space for future expansion (in the "П" form). The building occupies area of 2100 sq.m. Its form is made of two parallelepipeds with same height. The two main entrances facing the city are highlighted with higher volumes. Very distinctive in height is the clock tower - a city landmark visible from the sea.

Original plan of the project of the station in Burgas (archive)

TIMELINE:

• 1866 26 oct - the first railway line Varna-Ruse
• 1866 7 nov - opened the first station in Varna (the Old station) - the building still exists today

• 1907 - started the construction of the station in Varna by architects Kiril Marichkov and Nikola Kostov
• 1908 - started the construction of the station in Burgas
• 1925 - openning of the station in Varna
• 1929 - installed the clock mechanism. Finished the building of the station in Burgas
• 2005 - finished restoration and repair works in the Varna station

architect Kiril Marichkov

Two architects designed the railway station in Varna - arch. Kiril Marichkov and arch. Nikola Kostov. They first made the project for the station in Burgas but changed it for the construction of the building in Varna. In the end the first built of the 2 stations was the one in Varna - started in 1907 and finished 1925.



About the architect - Kiril Marichkov / Kiro Marichkov

born in Kalofer in 1875 he graduated in Karlsruhe and later on became one of the leading architects in Sofia designing in the style Secession (article here).

Timeline:

- 1875 born in Kalofer
- 1903 - design project for the station in Burgas, project for urban plan of Sofia city-center.
- 1904 - competition for the public space around Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Sofia (2nd place)
- 1907 - started the construction of the station in Varna
- 1908 - started the construction of the station in Burgas
- 1909 - started architectural studio together with arch. Fingov
- 1912 - house of G. Lazarov - Denkoglu 19 str. - himself declares it's his best work
- 1917-1920 - design of Hotel "Imperial", Sofia (more here)
- 1919 - birth of his son Kiril Marichkov
- 1922 - died in Sofia

- 1925 - openning of the station in Varna
- 1929 - installed the clock mechanism. Finished the building of the station in Burgas
- 2005 - finished restoration and repair works in the Varna station

Other buildings: schools, houses, public buildings.

Did you know Varna was part of the Orient Express line??

I didn't.

Here's the info I found - Varna was part of the very first variation of the Orient Express line. Due to WW and other factors the line changed during the years. The 2 original endpoints are Paris and Istanbul. In between the first train departed on October 4, 1883. Starting form Paris, via Munich, Vienna, to Romania. At Giurgiu, passengers were ferried across the Dannube to Ruse and catch the Ruse-Varna train. From there to Istanbul passenger traveled by ferry. Some sources say the time necessary to do the trip was 6 days.

I can only imagine what an adventure it was! May be one day it may become a cultural route including ferry form Varna to Istanbul.

photo

Varna railway station

You definitely should check this article - it shows nowadays photos of the Orient Express journey.

PS: Many thanks to Irina Atanasova for this hint :)

Digging the Internet for Varna

I'm so happy sites like lostbulgaria.com and retrobulgaria.com exist!

I found some old photos that include the railway station. These photos will help a lot in my investigation - what has been changed in the building during the ages.

Varna, railway station 1920s (Варна, ж.п. гарата, 20-те години на ХХ век)

view form the port (link). I see my task in the background 

Another precious net spot - Forum 

Facades are one thing, a whole other thing is the urban planning. I am surprised again how much I find when I ask good-old Google:

I also checked:

• google maps 
• bgmaps.com - for more orientation with neighbourhood names
• gisvarna.com - I'm so used to gisSofia that I can check every site for free and I'm in a difficulty that gisvarna is paid. The thing that pisses me off is there's no prices for the services and the registration itself requires my bank account. Please..
• Officials: http://agup.varna.bg
• Official Urban Plans - strategic plan (bg: ОУП)
• Old plans: taken form this blog - 10x people!

Varna Old Plans:

Map of Varna - 1854

Varna urban plan 1897

Varna urban plan 1923

map of Varna nowadays 

topographic map of Varna

Latest Strategic plan of Varna

Sites I found and will explore further:

• http://www.varnaplan.bg - 

Blogging as a diary of the graduation work/project

In in my years of studying architecture I spent lots of time researching. Research is the most fundamental step in a project. I believe in the collected information is the key to the good concept. Many times I've searched the net for specific topic, building, architect and most valuable I found the architecture students' blogs. I was surprised to find out it's a practice in some universities that the students have a blog for their semester project - step by step they do it like a diary - from research through experimentation with shapes to the final idea.

Speaking of that I finally got it to graduation work (6th year yeah). I chose a project in the field of restoration and heritage - The railway in Varna and the surrounding space.

The first step - visit the National Institute of Cultural Heritage in Sofia. In the picture bellow you can see half of the papers I have to go through for the 2 railway stations.

That's enough for now

Here's the blogs that inspired me to start:

1. Student EMILIE C. who I  found helpful during the project for a Hotel  http://arch3611f12emiliec.blogspot.com/

2. Something almost random : http://underdog-arch-student.com/

3. Found thanks to 1. http://jcastillotheoreticaldesign.blogspot.com/
http://archithinker87.blogspot.com/
http://arch3611f12trungnguyen.blogspot.com/

4. Another Emilie C. blog - http://8fultonstreet.blogspot.com/

5. Ferrari museum - http://museoferrari.blogspot.com/ this is not a students blog but it was mind changing (for me).

6. This one is from the software-oriented blogs: http://formularch.blogspot.com/

And we should not forget Beehance.net !

Foggy morning in my neighbourhood

Just around the block (literally) I enter a totally different world. Suddenly I'm in the countryside and in some particular moments this is a very beautiful place.

That's Orlandovtzi - a neighborhood very near to the city center but left isolated. It's a mixed area - on one side it's an Ex-Industrial and on the other - village-inherited urban planning. But these days with these views compensate for the lack of public transport.

taken with my super-duper old phone but you can grasp the idea :)