The Orchards of Mladost
2022
Mladost 1 Neighbourhood
A walk around the Mladost District, which connects us with the fruit trees along the way and their stories.
“When the acacia blossoms,
then the okra is planted.
This is the beginning of summer.”
Everywhere in Mladost District we can find fruit trees – on the streets and in the parks, but mostly among the apartment blocks. In this study, Andrea Popyordanova asks herself how so many trees have appeared in a metropolitan neighbourhood without being part of the urban landscaping plans. Our attitudes to this urban vegetation are often mixed – as “inconvenient” for the urban environment, but they also have an interesting relationship with the people living there.
The walk in the Mladost District follows a pre-planned route and includes stories about several trees and the people who take care of them, as well as a discussion about this type of trees in an urban environment.
These materials include a specially made map, about which Andrea says: “In many of my projects I work with maps because a map communicates very quickly, of course faster than text. The accumulation of information itself is very interesting – after each exploratory walk, I plot points on the map and gradually a build-up of what I learn and discover over time emerges. I like that there’s just a marking of ideas – a map doesn’t tell everything – so people reading or using the map later can encounter the place through their eyes too.”
Materials related to the research can be found here.
Andrea Popyordanova is an artist whose creative practice spans illustration, book and graphic design. She is interested in how people live and what influence they have on the spaces they inhabit and how they connect with them. In 2021 she completed the project First Line, an imaginary guide to the Sunny Beach coastline and overconstruction, a theme told through drawings of swimming pools and hotel advertising texts. In 2022, she was a participant in the first edition of the Centre for Social Vision, where she began to work on the theme of Sofia’s unknown and wild green spaces and people’s relationship to them through the projects Orchards and Urban Harvest. www.andreapopyordanova.com
In collaboration with the Centre for Social Vision.
Links
Presentation of an audio guide that can be listened to individually or in a group during a walk through the city