Boris Stoyanov
UF SoA
Spring 2023
Chapel
Professor Stephen Belton
Concrete in Bulgaria carries a weight beyond its physical mass. It is an architectural manifestation of one of history’s most oppressive regimes—a material used to enforce state power, not to serve human experience. Unlike other former Eastern Bloc nations, where experimental brutalism occasionally offsets the monotonous uniformity of panel housing blocks, Bulgaria’s brutalist legacy is almost entirely one of imposition. The singular exception, Buzludzha, sits in the mountains, disconnected from the daily reality of the cities. This project, a chapel—Paraklis—confronts that legacy directly.
The Soviet Bloc’s suppression of religion was systematic, attempting to erase spiritual experience from public life. Yet, faith endured. In the post-communist landscape, concrete remains deeply tied to the very force that sought to extinguish religion, making it an unlikely material for spiritual architecture. This contradiction is precisely what gives the Paraklis its charge. The material is forced against its own nature, working in tension rather than compression, appearing weightless rather than massive. Walls do not touch, nor do they connect to the ceiling; they are suspended, held aloft by an external truss system that allows light to penetrate the seams between planes. This defiance of the material’s intrinsic properties parallels the defiance of religious persistence under Soviet rule.
Orthodox architecture is not mimicked but distilled to its essential spatial and phenomenological qualities. The processional sequence of entry embodies humility—not through a single low doorway, as found in monasteries, but through a gradual compression of space as one approaches the altar. The role of the dome is preserved, not in form but in effect—its function as a threshold to the heavens reinterpreted through an oculus that draws light down into the space. Light remains the primary mediator of spiritual experience, entering only through the oculi, the chimney, and the seams between walls, shifting throughout the day in direct dialogue with time and place.
Traditional Orthodox elements—Manoualia (candle-lighting station), seating, and the Iconostasis—retain their hierarchical positions but are materially reimagined. The Manoualia is not an object but a structural principle, shaping the spatial logic of the Paraklis itself. The seating extends from the form of the accompanying chair, a continuation of its exploration of concrete’s inversion. The Iconostasis, typically carved from wood, is here composed of water, continuously pumped from a subterranean pool through the structural system, completing a cyclical movement from ground to sky.
By its proximity to Buzludzha, the Paraklis both acknowledges and rejects the weight of Bulgaria’s brutalist past. It asserts that architecture, even that born of oppression, is not fixed in meaning—that the material which once embodied control can be reconstituted to evoke transcendence.
Although Communism is now 30 years past, these buildings serve as scars in cities- inescapable reminders with no reconciliation possible because of Eastern Europe’s perpetual state of economic collapse. These were structures designed to be oppressive, and are perhaps even more successful at this aim now than they were when first built. They are now decrepit and borderline ruinous, offering little past a bitter reminder of the Bulgarian situation.
The panel block in Bulgaria, the only form of Brutalism present in our major cities, manages to encapsulate the horrific past, the melancholic present, and the bleak future, all in one structure.
Brutalism, in the west, has no such connotations, and as such is free to be used as a pure expression and exploration of form.
This is my attempt to reconcile with the material, and offer it some redemption in the post-communist landscape.
The accompanying chair furthers this investigation. Concrete, inherently heavy and reliant on compression, is manipulated into an impossibly light form, working in tension through a trussed structure. Glass-fiber reinforcement allows for an extreme reduction in bulk, resulting in a piece that appears to defy its own material constraints. Topology optimization ensures maximal efficiency, reducing material use while maintaining structural integrity. The chair becomes an artifact of resistance—rejecting the imposed associations of its material and recasting it as something ethereal, something human.
Completing the triad, a lamp extends these principles into an even more distilled form. Its function is one of emanation, a concentrated hearth within the built environment. Just as the Paraklis radiates warmth into its surroundings, and just as the chair suspends material in tension, the lamp exists as a microcosm of these ideas—anchoring light, reducing concrete to its barest expression of structure and glow. It does not illuminate through brute force but through a quiet insistence, a beacon of presence rather than spectacle. Together, the Paraklis, chair, and lamp form a singular investigation– a reworking of a material burdened with a history as heavy as itself.