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 :)