Dominique Perrault to Design the New City of Sofia

French architect, Dominique Perrault, has been selected to design the new city center of Bulgaria’s capital Sofia. The jury was chaired by professor Helle Jul from Denmark, and the members were architects from Japan, France and the US.

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.

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.

Here are some first images of Perrault’s vision:

This is Norman Foster’s proposal:

The design vision by Zaha Hadid:

Project images via SkyscraperCity