So what is Panelka ?
The common name of prefabricated blocks of flats.
Druzhba means ‘friendship‘ we were lucky our house is like 1 min far from Druzhba lake. Druzhba is one of the suburb of the city , far from city center you have to use bus or underground and it will take like 30 mins.
It is actually panel block but Bulgarian people say as a slang ‘panelka‘.
Bulgarian Panelki (Communist-era housing)
they are totally symmetrical which it is easy to construct – just straight lines, cubes, parallelepipeds, simple volumes.
The role of Soviet architecture was not just the physical construction of buildings, but also the reconstruction of the way of life.
The panelki become often the subject of emotional conversations. People discuss at length whether they are ugly, uncomfortable, demeaning to their inhabitants, a symbol of a totalitarian state, a bad dream, etc.
prefab structures have become part of the urban folklore.
Nearly 700,000 homes in Bulgaria were built using panel technology during socialism.
Today 2 million Bulgarians live in panel blocks as you know Bulgaria population is 7 million.
The purpose of built panelkas to solve the migration problem with the population who is moving from the countryside to major cities. An interesting fact is that unlike other socialist countries Bulgarians were allowed to own their apartments.
After the fall of “socialism” and the beginning of the transition people started their own businesses at the entrances of the blocks where there was little space. Very often the entrances originally designed to be accessible from both sides of the buildings were left to function only one-sided. The other sides were converted into beauty studios, service workshops, groceries, pet stores, pharmacies, etc. Often they were simply neglected or turned into storage places for all kinds of junk. Thus their purpose for quick access in case of evacuation was lost.
Melis 