Some people refer to blocks 67 and 68 in the Druzhba 1 housing estate as the Bulgarian ‘twin towers’. Although this nickname is not strictly accurate, it helps to raise the profile of one of Sofia’s most unusual buildings. The two residential blocks, seemingly joined together in the shape of the letter ‘H’, were built in the late 1970s and are the work of ‘SOFPROEKT’. In fact, there is a gap between the cantilevers of the two buildings, which allows the individual blocks to move independently in the event of an earthquake. Furthermore, contrary to expectations, there is no heated connection between the blocks.

Despite their proximity to Druzhba Lake, very few of the flats in the buildings have a view of it. In 2020, designer Alexander Predov from the Eastern Blox initiative partnered with Italian sculptor Alessandro Ponghan to create the collage ‘The Standing Man’, entirely inspired by Blocks 67 and 68. It depicts an artistic representation of a person kneeling but with their head held high. The idea is to illustrate the difficulties the whole world is facing under lockdown conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic.