Office: Sofia

The garage, whose address – 6 Listopad Street – gave the studio its name, is located on a short cul-de-sac on the outskirts of Sofia's downtown area, in what was once a prime location but which has since been taken over by a cheap market and seedy hotels. The small, tumbledown houses, the stray dogs, the old cars parked on the sidewalk, but above all the silence, give the place a godforsaken, timeless air. Actually, it is forsaken only by the municipality, which cleans the street, if ever, once a year. The only sign of life on the street is the L6 studio.

It occupies one of the ground-floor spaces belonging to the first private residential building on the street, built after the fall of the socialist regime in the 1990s. It was originally designed with garages at ground level and apartments above, but as soon as the building was completed, the garages were turned into shops. The 1990s in Bulgaria were a time of 'mini markets'. The big and empty state 'COOP' shops disappeared and the newborn private shopkeepers started transforming all kinds of cheap spaces into small shops. Basement storage spaces became 'Klek-shops' (squat-shops), so called because they are at ground level and one has to squat down to buy something. Most garages were turned into mini markets or cafés, and sometimes even architectural studios. Converting garages was also the only work for young architects in the '90s. Nowadays, the rapid growth of big discount supermarket chains and the lack of on-street parking are slowly restoring the former garages to their original function.

L6 describe both their work and their studio interior as small, simple and sympathetic. They connected the basement vertically with the ground floor, making a split-level office and getting nearly 55 m² out of the three-metre-wide space. The vertical division of the small space is strictly functional. The ground floor is given over to a meeting space, the basement to storage and model making, and the mezzanine is a workstation area. Every single centimetre had to be used efficiently – the railing of the mezzanine level as drawing table, the basement stairway as bookshelf and the niche under the stairs as toilet. The garage opens to the outside through a bi-fold metal door with wooden slats. Although Adriana and Ivailo wanted their office to resemble an industrial container, they chose wood for the exterior to match the wooden cladding of the cantilever of the existing building. They are convinced that an architect should always consider the existing context regardless of its aesthetic qualities and have also been trying to persuade the rest of the 'garage' owners to use the same timber-slat doors. L6 even try to cultivate and create a congenial atmosphere in front of their garage-studio, which includes six stray dogs. When the door is open, many passers-by drop in and try to order a coffee, taking the studio for a coffee shop. When the door is closed, there is no indication of the space's true function. And L6 intends to keep it like that, because they want to maintain the garage scale and ambience.