Abstract: When Bulgaria’s political elite set out to remake post-Ottoman Sofia into a modern nation-state capital, they looked westward – importing public institutions, social norms, visual aesthetics, and architectural expertise to align the city with its European counterparts. The arrival of Bulgarian architects trained across European polytechnics added a new ambition to this project: the creation of a distinctive national style that would give them a competitive edge over foreign specialists and secure their standing as a modern profession. The stylistic debates that followed, waged largely within their professional organization, reveal a simultaneous drive toward heritage protection and professional consolidation. While these two objectives were shared by most, architects were sharply divided over how to reconcile modern construction technologies with traditional building craft, and the social demands of contemporary urban life with vernacular modes of domestic space from a bygone era. This article traces the competing voices in the debates over the “national style” from the turn of the twentieth century to the eve of the Second World War.
Keywords: Europeanization, vernacular architecture, neo-Byzantine architecture, Ottoman heritage, professionalization, heritage protection