Zdrave Residential Building

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Zdrave Residential Building

Mismatches
Urban Design
Promotion and production
Ownership and tenure

Main objectives of the project

Zdrave Mix-Use Residential Building is situated in the city center in close proximity to the Medical Academy. The program is focused on accommodating student, professionals, and families.

Date

  • 2019: Construction

Stakeholders

  • Architect: Plamen Bratkov
  • Architect: Rossitza Hristova Bratkova

Location

Continent: Europe
Country/Region: Bulgaria

Description

The building is located in close proximity to the city center and the Medical Academy. The neighborhood is comprised of the vanishing eclectic houses from the 20th century, the rigid socialist Modernist high-rise of the Medical Academy, and the kitschy, pseudo-contemporary housing blocks from the 2000's. The program is mixed, mainly residential however in order to respond to the specific needs of the place with some of the biggest national hospitals in the area the building accommodates medical practices in the first three levels, a coffee shop, the next several floors are smaller units designed for students, and the upper floors provide regular family apartments. After the first site was occupied the adjacent site was also acquired in order to continue the building and provide more student housing. The functional mix stemming from the specific locality becomes a social one as well, counteracting to the growing number of repetitive closed housing complexes in the periphery of the city.
The design aims at finding a middle ground, oscillating between the Modernist iterations across the street and the arbitrariness of the adjacent blocks. To break the monotony of the housing units perforated handmade aluminum panels are introduced as solar shading. Their pattern is in the smallest scale and corresponds to the pixelation of the entire residential façade which can be traced in the window openings up to the perforated roof, and finally in the four partite square units forming the largest grid of the façade. A visual distinction is sought between the public and the private in their different treatments, materials and scale. Both are horizontally separated by a thin goldish line that corresponds to the height of the lower hospital volume. The glazing below the line is subdivided by uneven verticals glazing. Their upper parts are goldish and popping out, the verticals are discretely outlining the silhouettes of the houses that existed on the plot preserving their memory.
The building is made up of black plastered walls, handmade aluminum panels, and goldish bricks. The structure is mainly reinforced concrete. Due to the small site of the building a regular construction with columns would have left little to no space for parking underground. In order to free the underground level for parking the structure features four pre-stressed beams for each building to carry the loads leaving open space for cars. In order to achieve a fully glazed façade on the ground floor I-beams paired with reinforced concrete were installed to have smaller column sections and attain the feeling of openness in the most public parts of the buildings.

Mikrofond EAD and Habitat for Humanity in Bulgaria

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Mikrofond EAD and Habitat for Humanity in Bulgaria

Mismatches
Financing
Promotion and production

Main objectives of the project

Date

  • 2008: Construction

Stakeholders

  • Promotor: Mikrofond EAD
  • Promotor: Habitat for Humanity

Location

Continent: Europe
City: Bulgaria
Country/Region: Bulgaria

Description

In 2008, the Habitat for Humanity International established a partnership with Mikrofond EAD, a microfinance organization in Bulgaria that focuses on underserved regions and communities.

They have run a project together to deliver housing microfinance services to clients in housing poverty throughout Bulgaria.[1]

Before the partnership, Mikrofond offered only business loans, but it saw an opportunity to introduce consumer loans for home improvements. The size of the loans provided was EUR 1,750 (USD 2,365) and the average payment duration is 31 months.

Habitat for Humanity Bulgaria (http://hfh.bg/bg/) and Mikrofond also jointly provide financial education programmes to their clients. These cover budgeting, saving, debt management and financial planning, along with raising clients’ awareness about the benefits and risks of using credit.

[1] Habitat for Humanity, “Shelter Report 2014” (see sect. Microfinance for self-building and modernising housing, footnote 175).

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