UNFORMED DESIGN Wins Burgas Competition by Digging Down

UNFORMED DESIGN's Ground of Descent beat 144 international entries to win first prize in the Park Zone 3 competition, and its strategy is refreshingly literal: instead of filling a long-abandoned central excavation in Burgas, Bulgaria, the studio kept the void and built inside it.

The Municipality of Burgas and the Burgas 2032 Foundation organized the competition. Locals know the site simply as 'The Hole.' Most cities would backfill it or drop a trophy building on top. This proposal preserves the legibility of the void, embedding the majority of the cultural program below street level so surrounding city views stay intact and the public gets a continuous, layered descent into the ground.

How does the design reach the bottom?

Two primary descending routes stitch the sunken complex into the urban fabric. From Troikata Square, a geometric garden with terraced planting, patterned paving, and broad staircases guides pedestrians down into the site. A second route along San Stefano Boulevard plugs the lower-level public park into daily foot traffic. The park, in other words, works as infrastructure. It carries people whether or not they came for art.

Below grade, the program arranges exhibition galleries, educational facilities, artist studios, workshops, and gathering areas around sunken courtyards and vertical light wells. The wells pull natural daylight into the underground spaces — the perennial weak point of any subterranean cultural building, addressed here by section rather than gadgetry.

What rises above ground?

Almost nothing. The only above-ground structure is a compact, minimalist concrete cube positioned along San Stefano Boulevard, functioning as an urban marker — a single loud object amid a deliberately quiet landscape.

Inside, the cube houses a primary exhibition hall with a ten-meter ceiling height, illuminated by overhead skylights fitted with integrated blackout systems. Lower administrative levels connect directly to vertical circulation cores that drop into the main subterranean complex.

The material palette stays blunt. Exposed reinforced concrete retaining walls hold back the excavation, while the cube's exterior facades wear stratified rammed concrete that mirrors the geological layers of the original dig site. The building, in effect, quotes its own hole.

The imagery released by the studio shows the range of the section: an intermediate sunken platform with open gathering space, descending steps toward the main cultural entrance, a central sunken courtyard visible from the cultural level, a sculpture garden with landscaped paths and outdoor artworks at hole level, and a linear void space dedicated to the artists' block with its own intimate outdoor area.

What happens next?

For now, Ground of Descent — formally titled Space for Contemporary Art and Culture, PARK ZONE 3 — remains a competition-winning proposal rather than a contracted build. But the first prize signals that Burgas intends to treat 'The Hole' as an asset rather than an embarrassment. If the project proceeds, the city will get a cultural venue whose boldest gesture is subtraction.