site.btaUnion of Architects in Bulgaria and BTA Sign Media Partnership Agreement

On the World Architecture Day, October 7, the Union of Architects in Bulgaria (UAB) and the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA) signed a media partnership agreement. The document was signed by the BTA Director General Kiril Valchev and UAB Chairman Petar Dikov.

The World Architecture Day has been celebrated on the first Monday of October since 1996.

BTA will be signing a cooperation agreement with the Bulgarian Chamber of Architects as well, the BTA Director General noted.

He presented UAB with a copy of a BTA newsletter from the day the UAB was established, March 17, 1965. The first BTA news about UAB dates back to a month earlier - February 19, 1965, when a decision was made to establish the organization, Valchev said.

Petar Dikov said that the reputation of architects in Bulgaria can only be restored by informing the Bulgarian society through the media, "and here indeed BTA is a unique powerful engine of information generation for all media". In his words, much of the news that appears in the Bulgarian media outlets comes from the BTA.

Kiril Valchev said that a conceptual design for transformation of the space in front of the BTA building in Sofia has already been prepared. It was designed free of charge by UAB and the Union of Landscape Architects in Bulgaria, which is already being used to seek funding for its implementation.

Vladimir Milkov, the head of the Bulgarian Chamber of Architects, said that Chamber cooperates with BTA even without an agreement.

He said that interests of the public totally overlap with the interests of architects.  He noted that Bulgarian architects possess knowledge, skills and culture and are not inferior to their colleagues abroad.

According to him, the name of the Ministry of Regional Development and Public Works should include architecture as well.

Architect Istelianna Atanasova stressed that Bulgaria is a founding member of the International Union of Architects and participates in all UN meetings. "Bulgarian architects have made a huge contribution to this organization," she added. Atanasova recalled that in the 1985 - 1987 period the president of the International Union of Architects was Bulgarian architect Georgi Stoilov. It was his initiative to create a World Architecture Day. 

Architect Desislava Dimitrova dwelled on the second edition of the international forum "History and Future - the World Cultural Heritage of Italy and Bulgaria".  This forum looks at the UNESCO sites in Bulgaria and Italy. 

On Tuesday, UAB will host a roundtable with Bulgarian and Italian architects. There will be various initiatives across the country on Monday on the occasion of the World Architecture Day, Milkov noted.

At the end of the event, Kiril Valchev presented Petar Dikov and Vladimir Milkov with copies of the special issue of BTA's LIK magazine, dedicated to the seaside resort of Albena, a medal and a postage stamp dedicated to the 125th anniversary of BTA.