Iassen Markov is a Bulgarian architect and educator based in Stuttgart, co-founder of the interdisciplinary platform TECHNOBETON, established in 2003 with Julian Friedauer. Positioned between Sofia and Stuttgart, TECHNOBETON operates at the intersection of architecture, music, and performance—investigating rhythm, density, and spatial contradiction as critical tools for contemporary design. The project’s title, a fusion of “techno” and “beton” (concrete), encapsulates its ethos: a resistance to architectural inertia through sonic and material experimentation.
Markov studied ecology at the University of Sofia and architecture at the University of Stuttgart, where he later taught at the Institute for Principles of Modern Architecture (IGMA). His academic trajectory includes visiting roles at Zurich University of the Arts and the Technical University of Munich, where he has contributed to expanded pedagogies that frame architecture as a narrative system, performative construct, and spatial attitude.
He was awarded an architecture fellowship at Akademie Schloss Solitude in 2007–2008, during which he developed “Assozziatti – Progetti Internazzionali,” a research exhibition on architecture and post-digital culture. His work has been exhibited internationally, including solo and group shows in Sofia, Prague, Stuttgart, and Munich. Across media, his projects blur typological boundaries, drawing from personal memory, infrastructural scale, and absurdist logic to destabilize normative design narratives.
In 2025, Markov curated the Bulgarian Pavilion at the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale under the title PSEUDONATURE. Framed as an artificial ecosystem within a repurposed city hall in Zhubei, the installation interrogates simulation, ecological fragility, and the constructed logics of sustainability in the age of machine intelligence.
Through TECHNOBETON and his wider practice, Iassen Markov continues to test architecture’s spatial and symbolic limits—constructing new terrains of meaning through material friction, rhythm, and speculative fiction.
What inspires you?
Strangely enough, it’s often the bad things — tight deadlines, empty pockets, bad weather, inner drama. They push me to create something good in return.
What inspired you to become an architect?
One autumn afternoon in Sofia, about twenty-five years ago. I got dumped on a date — and somehow, in that moment, I really saw architecture for the first time.
How would you describe your design philosophy?
It’s always shifting. Maybe Bruce Lee said it best: “Be water, my friend.”
What is your favorite project?
I’ve never really liked projects. I’m always trying to find a way not to make a “project,” but just to turn ideas directly into results. Maybe that’s not possible — but I keep trying anyway.
What is your favorite architectural detail?
The round opening in my grandfather’s mill. It let squirrels glide in and build nests. There was also this sunbeam — like a village version of the Pantheon’s oculus — drifting across the old machines and giving them a strange kind of magic.
Do you have a favorite material?
A few. I’m drawn to basic things like concrete and styrofoam. I use a lot of wood, even though I’m not that fond of it. Maybe my real favorite is amber — but it’s too rare, too expensive.
What is your process for starting a new project?
I tell myself a story. If I believe it, then the project has begun.
How do you fuel your creativity?
Creativity can’t be forced. But there’s a space I often visit — where nothing is too serious, where laughter wins over logic, where it’s better to exaggerate than to analyze. It’s a place where boredom is not allowed. That’s where creativity lives.
What inspired PSEUDONATURE?
A trip to a remote Bulgarian town. We brought a snow machine into an empty city hall and created a surreal winter indoors. It felt like a parallel reality — a man-made ecosystem with its own rules and aesthetics. That’s when we named it: Pseudonature — fake, but still real.
What advice would you give to young architects?
If architecture can create fun, then fun can create architecture too.
