dontDIY

dontDIY is an architecture and design studio founded in 2012 in Sofia by Svetoslav Michev, Stefan Minkov and Hristo Stankushev. Antonina Ilieva joined the partnership in late 2014.

Over the first five years of the studio’s development, dontDIY has accumulated a considerable portfolio of realized interior design projects. dontDIY won first prize in the 2012 Passive House International Design Competition, and third prize in the competition to design the interior of Bulgarian National Television’s Studio 5, also in 2012. Other notable accolades for the studio’s projects are the 2017 Dibla Shop/Exhibition Area Award and the 2015 Velux Prize. dontDIY was the curator of the seventh edition of One Architecture Week festival in 2014. Our projects have been featured in a number of international publications such as A10, Bravacasa, Abitare, Frame, dezeen.

Both architectural and interior design to us are a way to situate people in the world of objects, systems and concepts both larger and smaller than themselves. Our project work is a reflection on phenomena and processes in the environment we inhabit. Our focus is to observe, to discuss with each other, and to understand these processes, then to try to extract the positive and the specific. In this way, we hope, our projects are a constructive commentary to the present that we project back into the environment.

Predominant topics in our work are: historicity of spaces and design-objects and its place in the life of contemporary people (worldwide and in our country); ways to manifest modernity in design and architecture; plants and the built environment; visualization of processes – of building, of dwelling, of work, of interaction.