The 1920s is a period of the Bulgarian history with a high concentration of polarized artistic movements and also a great number of notable events like exhibitions, contests, debates, etc. Bulgarian students in architecture in European high schools (there has no architectural high school in Bulgaria up to 1943) - mainly in Germany, but also in Italy, Austria, Czechoslovakia, France, etc. - were in touch with the newest postwar ideas of the architectural theories. This is the time of the high popularity of the extreme strictness of Adolph Loos (popularized between 1910-13), the famed by Bauhaus Rationalism (active between 1919-33), the Five Principles of Le Corbusier (proclaimed 1925-28) and others. Returning in their home country the Bulgarian architects bring these ideas and apply them here mixing them with the local building traditions, materials and also - taste.
As regards to the architecture, it is very important to note one historical concussion happened circa 1920 - the high level of migration from lost Bulgarian territories to the big cities. Automatically this predetermines the growth of the population in the cities and the acute housing needs. 1928 was marked with a grave natural disaster - the earthquake near the town of Chirpan that has destroyed a great number of buildings. As a result the reinforced concrete skeleton was applied by the law. This way of construction gives the chance for the architects to apply some of the techniques typical for the modern style: horizontal bands of windows, the free plan, angle windows, roof terraces, etc. As a result the central territories of Sofia and some of the other cities were dominated by the 1930s and 1940s modernist apartment buildings.
The population in the cities has grown up so it predetermines public building for the new cosmopolitan way of live - schools, hotels, concert and cinema halls, banks, office buildings, hospitals, etc. Also many industrial buildings have appeared - factories, slaughterhouses, covered markets and railway stations. In this period a great number of architects have worked together in tandems in private architectural bureaus combining their skills and qualities. Among the leading names of this time was Georgi Ovcharov, Ivan Vassilyov, Dimitar Tsolov, Victoria Angelova, Stancho Belkovski, Svetoslav Grozev, Stefan Venedikt Popov, Kostadin Mumdjiev, etc.
This good way of cultural and economic development has ended in the years after the socialist coup d'état of 1944. In the next years till 1948 all the private enterprises were forbidden so the architectural bureaus could not exist anymore. The architecture was loaded with a completely new function with which the Modern Movement architecture could difficulty exist.
