Born as Ivan Tsokov Vasilyov on 28 February 1893 in the town of Oryahovo, Bulgaria. In 1911, after completing high school in Sofia, he went to Munich to study painting. In 1914, Vasilyov started his education in architecture in the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology where he graduated in 1919. After returning to Bulgaria, he worked in collaboration with Stancho Belkovski on the design of Vlado Georgiev house, nowadays the Austrian Embassy. In 1925, Ivan Vasilyov started a long time cooperation with Dimitar Tsolov with whom he created one of the finest examples in the Bulgarian architecture of that era.
