Designing Land: Kuklen Industrial Park and the Transformation of Plovdiv’s Peripheries through Global Production

Ina Valkanova

Thursday 26.3, 14.00

ONLINE

This lecture presents an in-depth study of a global production landscape on the periphery of Plovdiv—the Trakia Economic Zone. Building on discussions of material flows, networks, and social dynamics, it examines how land is transformed through interconnected material, regulatory, and experiential processes.

Focusing on the role of the private construction company Senit, the lecture traces how industrial development was initiated on former agricultural land and enabled through alliances between political, financial, and advisory actors. In doing so, it highlights the mechanisms of extended industrial urbanization. The case of Industrial Park Kuklen is examined through land ownership patterns, transactions, and management structures, revealing the political-economic frameworks that have shaped the area, alongside emerging practices of care and environmental repair.

The lecture further explores the evolving material life of the landscape, shaped by both human and non-human forces, where natural processes intersect with the controlled design of industrial infrastructures. By approaching industrial territories as dynamic and relational environments, it offers a multi-layered, more-than-human understanding of global production landscapes, challenging the notion that such developments occur on a tabula rasa or are governed solely by dominant economic and political forces.

Ina Valkanova is a researcher, urbanist, and activist. Her work explores the relationship between global production and local environments, focusing on a special economic zone on the periphery of Plovdiv, Bulgaria. She holds a PhD from ETH Zürich (Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies) and a Dipl.-Ing. from RWTH Aachen University. From 2017 to 2019, she served as Coordinator for Investment and Innovation for Sofia’s long-term development strategy, Vision for Sofia 2050. Prior to this, she was Director of the international festival One Architecture Week in Plovdiv. Ina is a co-founder of Gradoscope, a Sofia-based collective focusing on urban and landscape process design in complex urban initiatives and redevelopment projects. She has taught at the University of Architecture in Sofia and at ETH Zürich, and has lectured widely across Europe, including at Copenhagen Architecture Week, Belgrade International Architecture Week, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, and KU Leuven. Her work has been published in Steel Cities: The Architecture of Logistics in Central and Eastern Europe, Dimensions Journal, and Bauwelt, among others. She served on the jury of the 2025 New European Bauhaus Awards and recently co-curated the exhibition It Was All Fields Once, presented at CIVA and Track Brussels.

Within the framework of the course 
MACHINE IN THE GARDEN: Wanderings through the Countryside

By the Observatory of the Countryside

Tutor: Metaxia Markaki

For online attendance contact memarkaki@uth.gr