The whole idea was born in Europe in the first half of the 20th century, when many such areas were created there, similar to the English idea of a "Garden City", revised in the German Siedlungen.
In Bulgaria, they have been implemented in very few places - the workers' housing in the Tvardi Livadi neighborhood near the mines in Pernik, as well as several neighborhoods in Sofia. Due to a number of financial and organizational problems in Plovdiv, such a large-scale project never happened, but on a modest scale this was achieved in the years of the Second World War.
The place is next to today's Agricultural Institute intersection - between Iztochen, Hristo Botev and Sankt Peterburg boulevards - or more precisely, between Mikhail Takev and Trudovak streets. This space was then part of the Lauta district.
The scale in Plovdiv is smaller, but the concept is the same - and entirely in the spirit of German residential complexes. A series of row houses were planned - six in number - some of which two-story, others - one-story. The so-called block houses were built in 1943.
By the end of the construction season in 1943, 6 two-story and 8 one-story houses were erected. All have their own yard and a wide landscaped area around them. These are all the buildings realized according to this plan to date. The designer of the complex was the architect working in the municipality at the time - Alexander Tumangelov - a little-known name of an architect who graduated in Brno, Czechoslovakia, in 1934.
After the political changes of 1944, changes also occurred in architecture. Thus, the rest of the site set aside for workers' housing, completed in the years after September 9, is in a completely different style. The arrangement in rows and with rich landscaping between the dwellings has been preserved, but the buildings are now apartment buildings with several floors.
Despite all the vicissitudes, the mini-neighborhood is still an interesting phenomenon, hidden between the big boulevards of the following decades, socialist blocks and chaotic cooperatives of the last 30 years.
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