Industrial Heritage without Memory: The Cotton Factory of Varna between Past and Redevelopment
Industrial Heritage without Memory: The Cotton Factory of Varna between Past and Redevelopment

Summary/Abstract: This article examines why one of Varna’s largest pre-socialist buildings – the Cotton Factory – remains materially intact while its industrial past has largely disap-peared from public memory. Drawing on site observation, archival fragments, interviews and online discussions, the study identifies a set of mechanisms through which memory erodes: fragmented sensory recollection, low occupational prestige, institutional opacity, shifting moral regimes after 1944 and 1989, urban discontinuity, spatial distancing and the emergence of neighbourhood myths. These forces converge, producing a durable silence around the factory’s social world. At the same time, certain residual attachments – belonging, aesthetic recognition and projected cultural aspirations – continue to anchor the building in collective imagination. The factory persists as a material form whose past cannot be fully narrated yet has not been culturally concluded.

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