Author: Мещра

In August, the village of Dolen was home to the first edition of Transfiguration Festival, which hosted many high-profile music acts such as Isihia, Kayno Yesno Slonce, Smallman, Balkanski and Theodosii Spassov, Baba Zula and so on. After finishing our first architectural workshop in Dolen, we started work on several events for the Transfiguration Festival. We created a guide map for the Festival guest, outlining the Festival’s main locations, as well as sites of interest throughout the village and its surroundings. Meshtra made its HQ in a house in the very heart of the village, and from there we were able to help visitors to get their bearings in Dolen and advertise them to the various activities we proposed. We set up a series of lectures and discussions open to the guests of the festival. Many locals also took interest and supplied the sessions with their own stories and experience. The results from the architectural workshop were the subject of an exhibition, including our...

Architectural workshop on Preserving the cultural heritage in the village of Dolen, July 2015 The contacts we made during our initial surveys made this workshop possible. Professors from the University of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Geodesy in Sofia (UACEG), practicing architects, local historians and members of the Association for construction with natural materials all came as lecturers during our fieldwork. The course we proposed aimed to provide a clear picture of the historical development of the region, to outline major issues related to the preservation of heritage, not only in Dolen but throughout Bulgaria, and finally to introduce the participants to working techniques with natural materials. Surveying fieldwork featured the study of objects of tangible and intangible cultural heritage. Houses were studied and described, but at the same time we spoke with their inhabitants, who shared information about their typical way of life, both today and in the past. We discovered typical elements of the lifestyle in the village and the...