🟤 A Whimsical Reuse: @studionada_arch Transforms Bulgaria’s Old Mill into a Rural Cultural Condenser 🟤
A Whimsical Reuse explores refined architectural transformations where #history is reinterpreted through #poetic interventions and contemporary #craft. Forgotten spaces gain new life, revealing a #dialogue between #memory, #material and contemporary ways of living.
In the #rural landscape of Bulgaria’s Devetaki Plateau, studio nada transformed an abandoned 1930s mill into a vibrant #cultural center for the #local community. Through minimal and sensitive interventions, the project preserves the building’s #raw #industrial character while introducing spaces for education, cultural exchange, and collective gathering. The Old Mill becomes a catalyst for rural regeneration, reframing #adaptive #reuse as a cultural and ethical practice, and the #restoration process itself as an act of #collective learning shaped through intergenerational exchange, local participation, and interdisciplinary #collaboration.
The Old Mill also reflects broader discussions on the cultural activation of rural territories. Increasingly, European policies on rural regeneration recognize #culture and #heritage not as secondary aesthetic concerns but as strategic tools for territorial #resilience and #social cohesion. The project demonstrates how small-scale architectural interventions can foster collective identity and civic participation without relying on large-scale institutional infrastructures. As Hayden (1997) notes, everyday buildings often operate as repositories of social memory precisely because they remain embedded within ordinary life. Here, reuse becomes less about the conservation of an object and more about a #living process sustaining the continuity of communal practices. More than a restored #landmark, the Old Mill becomes a rural cultural condenser where heritage evolves into an active framework for collective life.
✍️ @melina.arvaniti.pollatou
📸 @_todortodorov
#old #mill #transformation #bulgaria #village #young #architect #archisearch
🟤 Stories of Contemporary Domesticity 👉 Episode 14 👉 The House and the Portals by @studionada_arch is a Material Archive in Rural Bulgaria 🟤
‘Stories of contemporary domesticity or HOMEland’, a series curated by @__archt.__ explores different interpretations of the notion of home through an open dialogue with contemporary architectural approaches to housing.
The fourteenth episode follows Studio Nada as it reinterprets a rural house, dismantling the myth of urban domesticity and creating a home where past and present coexist. The project explores the tension between contemporary living and the preservation of architectural memory, revealing the layered history embedded in the original structure. Composed of adobe and clay bricks, local stone, and irregular timber, the house embodies a form of unintentional sustainability and “honest” construction logic shaped over generations. Exposed fragments of walls and ceilings act as portals—thresholds of memory—where textures, techniques, and traces of past inhabitation are simultaneously preserved, exhibited, and reactivated.
These moments frame the house as a living archive, in which contemporary life unfolds within the enduring intelligence of rural craft. Rooted in local knowledge, craftsmanship mediates the dialogue between materiality and time, lending precision and cultural continuity. Architecture here resists erasure, instead rendering temporality visible through thickened, layered, and unresolved interventions. In a fast-paced, capitalist world where domesticity is too often conflated with urbanity, The House and the Portals emerges as a domestic landscape where preservation, adaptation, and everyday inhabitation converge, redefining the home as an evolving archive shaped by memory, material intelligence, and the quiet persistence of rural life.
✍️ @melina.arvaniti.pollatou
📸 @_todortodorov
#stories #domestic #home #house #architecture #rural #design #bulgaria #slow #living #thursday #vibe #inspiration #archt #archisearch
〰️The Architect’s Office〰️Studio nada’s Workspace Is a Self-built, Brutalist Cottage Amid Walnut Trees in Rural Bulgaria
The architect’s office explores the studio as both laboratory and mirror of architectural thought. The series examines how space, ritual, tools, and collaboration shape design culture. From intimate ateliers to larger practices, these workplaces reveal values and ambitions—where ideas are tested and identities take form, moving from paper and digital drawing toward the built world.
@studionada_arch is an architecture practice deeply rooted in the rural landscape, the reinvention of traditional construction methods, and the pursuit of experimental research. Founded in 2020 by architects Antonina Tritakova and Georgi Sabev, the studio is based in a modest yet magnetically charming rectangular building defined by its raw materiality, in the small village of Karpachevo in northern Bulgaria—with a population of fewer than 150 residents. Sharing its yard with an old two-storey adobe house and a stone barn, Studio nada brings to life an architecture that nurtures slow living, immersed in the rhythms of nature, honest materiality, and a profound understanding of how to live with the land.
Blending architecture with landscape, Studio nada emerges as a raw garden pavilion—an elemental retreat born from the architects’ desire for withdrawal and creation, where work and life intertwine seamlessly. The atelier takes form as a clear, almost archetypal volume: a restrained, self-built, rectangle of exposed ceramic blocks, echoing vernacular intelligence. Once the primary building material of the village, clay returns here with renewed resonance—not as nostalgia, but as a precise, contemporary reinterpretation.
✍️ @melina.arvaniti.pollatou
📸 @_todortodorov
#rural #architecture #diy #garden #pavilion #architect #office #workspace #brutalist #raw #material #traditional #vernacular #studionada #archisearch
an absolute surprise ....
We are grateful to be ranked once again - among such great projects from all over the world. We thank everyone who supported our project to be among the nominees in this great architectural forum. Thank you for your trust! Bulgaria is represented with 7 more projects - each of them deserves a place among the finalists. We hope to see one of them up there!
#eumiesaward #architecture_award #projects #miesvanderrohe #awards #nominee #enthusiasm #lovearchitecture #amazingspaces
Антонина Тритакова и Георги Събев | studio nada | BIG SEE Perspective Award Winner 2025
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Антонина и Георги са съоснователи на архитектурно студио studio nada, създадено през 2020 г. след завръщането им в България. Завършили УАСГ – София, те натрупват опит в сферата на културното наследство и историческите сгради във Великобритания и Германия. Работата им е отличавана с редица награди, а паралелно с проектирането и строителството, организират и международни архитектурни работилници и доброволчески инициативи в село Кърпачево.
SN : „Вярваме, че архитектурата има силата да променя не само заобикалящата ни среда, но и да оформя културния и социалния живот, като възпитава естетика и чувствителност у хората. Процесът, през който преминаваме с всеки проект, е най-ценен за нас – защото участваме активно не само в проектирането, но и в самото изграждане. Обичаме да експериментираме, да наблюдаваме, никога не спираме да задаваме въпроси и винаги се стремим да надхвърлим обикновеното и познатото.“
Проекти
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Старата мелница в Кърпачево | The Mill
През 2022 г. старата мелница в Кърпачево е възстановена като културен център, който съживява социалния живот в селото. Проектът използва местни и рециклирани материали, запазвайки суровата селска естетика на сградата. Новата функция е внедрена по чувствителен и балансиран начин, с контраст между старото и новото.
Студио nada
Малко студио в покрайнините на Карпачево, съчетаващо уют, природа и творческа атмосфера. Построено от собствениците с помощта на близки, то е мост между традиционната и съвременната архитектура. Използвани са естествени материали в суров вид, в хармония с местната среда и културно наследство.
Къщата с порталите | The House with the Portals
Реставрация на фамилна къща от XIX–XX век в центъра на Кърпачево. Новото разпределение следва оригиналното, като запазени елементи и текстури се подчертават чрез внимателна композиция от светлина и материали. Историческата конструкция остава видима, създавайки усещане за времеви пластове и преходност, подчертани със съвременни намеси.
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#bigseeawards #bigsee
We're looking for an intern!
Location: Karpachevo village
Period: from July onwards
Compensation: accommodation
Send your portfolio to: [email protected]
Join us!
#architecture #architectureinternship#workshops #architectureintern #village #nature #workinnature
archive project 01 - three years old
show kitchen - gorsko slivovo village
p.s. : highly recommend visiting the herbal house in gorsko slivovo with their incredibly delicious dishes
#archmodels #showkitchen #archproject #inprogress #redbricks #concept #archlovers #architecture #bricks #nature_obsession #dishes #landscape #project #villagelife #naturelife #smallhouse #brickfacade
We are thrilled to announce that our studio has been awarded 1st prize at the Archinova Architecture Awards in the single family house category for one of our projects - the house and the portals. We are grateful to our friends - the owners of this house for their trust!
Surprisingly, we were also awarded a second special prize for "rural areas development." Special thanks to the jury for recognizing our effort and to everyone who supported us on this architectural journey! This motivates us even further to continue our work in the same spirit!
#archinova #awards #architectureawards #rurallife #ruralarchitecture #studionada #archilovers #modernarchitecture #contemporaryarchitecture #woodarchitecture #naturalmaterials #karpachevo #architecture
С радост съобщаваме, че проектът за Мелницата бе отличен с първа награда в конкурса "Интериор на годината" на списание Наш Дом. Искрени благодарности на журито за тази висока оценка. Това е голяма отговорност, която се надяваме да защитаваме с бъдещите проекти!
#awards #oldmill #stonebuilding #restoration #adaptation #heritage #rural #ruralheritage #karpachevo #studionada
many thanks to the supportive people who helped us develope the Studio Project further for the future to be.
we build and learn together
hope we meet again!
many thanks to our colleagues :
Arh.Niki Davidkov
Arh.Bobi Burov
@other_architecture_bureau@teodoruz@stavrev.teodosi@boriszdr_10@konstantinaevtimov@metodihadjiyski@ir.radeva@devetaki_plateau
we still have a long way ahead ...
#workshop #architecture #oldbuilding #renovation #oldnew #wood #intervention #students #work #naturalbuilding #nature #arch
