French architect Dominique Perrault Architecture wins the international competition to design the new city center of Bulgaria’s capital Sofia.

The city center will be built in the next ten years and will house various state institutions. The center will be located along Sofia’s main boulevard ‘Tsarigradsko Shosse’. The vision of Bulgarian prime minister Sergei Stanishev and his brother – architect Georgii Stanishev – is to gather ministries and state agencies in the new ‘Sofia city’, relocated from the current center of Sofia.

The St Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Sofia’s historic center is one of the largest Eastern Orthodox churches in the world. In the background: the Gallery of Foreign Arts, the National Library and Sofia University in the background (Photo: Boby Dimitrov).

Perrault was selected among six companies, finalists in the contest, all of them world architectural design leaders, including Zaha Hadid, Norman Foster, and Massimiliano Fuksas. Two Bulgarian firms also participated in the final stages of the contest.

The contract with Perrault will be signed in the next two months, and the French architect will then select his Bulgarian partners. The financing of the project, however, is still ambiguous and will include external financing from individuals and public-private partnerships.

The projects which took part in the final round will be exhibited in the halls of the National Gallery for Foreign Art in Sofia.

Images via: www.skyscrapercity.com.