Search

Copyright of Arhitektura I Urbanizam is the property of Institute of Architecture, Urban & Spatial Planning of Serbia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In the historiography of modern Serbian architecture, the work of architect Đorđe Đorđević is characterized by evident marginalization. Although he was a public and private architect who collaborated with eminent civil engineers and bourgeois clients, biographical data and a chronology of his activites have not been consistently established. Many of his works were excluded during fragmentary reviews, due to the proxy signing of projects by civil engineers Lazar Kostić and Miloš Antić, in whose technical bureau he worked in the middle of the 1930s. Also, the circumstances that prolonged the recognition of architect Đorđević are his exclusion from professional associations and professional publishing activites; only one recorded exhibition activity and the devastation of his personal legacy during the Allied bombing of Belgrade in 1944. After a short time in the Ministry of Construction, his professional path was marked by private practice, which began with the establishment of a technical bureau with Aleksandar Kapović. From 1929, he operated as an independent certified architect, implementing capital public and residential buildings, one of which was located in Niš. He demonstrated a keen mastery of various stylistic tendencies, but quantitatively he designed a large number of objects in the style of academism. By consulting the Technical Directorate in the Historical Archive of Belgrade and the Ministry of Construction in the Archive of Yugoslavia, as well as other important primary and secondary sources, a systematic overview of Đorđević's opus was established.

Milutin Jovanović belongs to the generation of architects who significantly contributed to the urban and architectural development of Belgrade between the two world wars. However, since there has been no adequate valorization of his creativity, a complete list of his achievements and basic biographical data have remained completely unknown. By reconstructing Jovanović's works, chronologically systematized data about his movement in the architectural profession was obtained. He began his professional engagement as an assistant at the architectural department of the Belgrade Technical Faculty, and later devoted himself to private practice. During the entire interwar period, Jovanović designed dozens of residential buildings and one hotel, and was also dedicated to other design tasks. He was hired by wealthy representatives of the middle class - merchants, clerks, doctors, entrepreneurs and many others, for whom he designed predominantly representative high-rise residential buildings throughout the central city core. In accordance with the developments on the architectural scene of that time, respecting the requests of the clients, his achievements were in two dominant stylistic directions - academicism and modernism. The discovery of buildings designed in the spirit of modernism is particularly significant, because for a long time it was considered that Jovanović's main style was academicism. Given the lack of personal legacy and complete historiographical sources, the research was based on studying of the fund of the Technical Directorate of the City of Belgrade stored in the Historical Archive of Belgrade. Therefore, this work is the first monographic review of the life and work of the architect Milutin Jovanović.

At a time when Belgrade began to regenerate itself after centuries of Ottoman rule, a desire to create national symbols that would restore faith and identity to the tortured Serbian people began to be expressed. The mechanisms by which the state sought to demonstrate its power were often based in the arts. Building a national theatre was one of the most successful - but at the same time one of the most difficult - ways by which to restore the national and patriotic spirit. On the other hand, it was also a means by which to adopt a path of Europeanization, one that the Principality of Serbia took up with much zeal. The aim of this work is to draw attention to the construction of a National Theatre in Belgrade in the 19th century, an undertaking that faced insurmountable challenges. From the study of newspaper sources, among others, new sources of information were obtained in relation to the establishment of the National Theatre. However, these sources also allowed us to reach the conclusion that the construction of the National Theatre in Belgrade in the 19th century led not only to the creation of the first national symbol, but also to a pioneering structure in terms of the dawning of Academicism within Serbian architecture.

Copyright of Arhitektura I Urbanizam is the property of Institute of Architecture, Urban & Spatial Planning of Serbia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts at 35 Knez Mihailova Street is one of the most representative buildings in the manner of Art Nouveau and French decorativism in Belgrade's architecture. The monumental edifice of the nation's highest scientific institution was built to a design by Andra Stevanović and Dragutin Đorđević in 1912-24. After the Second World War it was adapted to a design by Grigorije Samojlov and Đorđe Smiljanić which restructured the interior in such a way that its spatial and volumetric features in fact corresponded much better to the building's formal and stylistic features than the original design. In addition to shedding light on the history of the building, the paper offers a comparative analysis of the surviving plans and designs for the building and a look at the architectural trends and pursuits of the first half of the 20th century.

A prominent figure of academic historicism in the architecture of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes/Yugoslavia between the two world wars, Nikolaj Petrovič Krasnov, academician of architecture of St. Petersburg's Academy of Arts, left a recognisable imprint on shaping the urban matrix of Belgrade. Krasnov's diverse and prolific output has begun to attract the attention of Russian and Serbian historians of architecture in the 1990s, becoming an unrivalled focus of the study of the legacy left by Russian-born architects in the former Yugoslavia. Despite significant advances made since then, the pace of research on Krasnov's Belgrade work is relatively slow. The goal of this paper, therefore, is to contribute to the body of historical work devoted to it by drawing attention to six as yet inadequately studied examples, three unexecuted concept designs and three residential/commercial buildings for private clients.

Nikola Spasic (1838-1916), famous merchant and Serbian benefactor, gave a tremendous contribution to the architectural development of our recent past The area of Knez-Mihailova street preserves four magnificent edifices that Nikola Spasic bequeathed to the Serbian people, and those buildings are Spasic’s family house, the House of Serbian National Invalid Fund Saint George, Sloga palace and Grand passage. The plans for these buildings were drawn up by the most notable Serbian architects during the times of extreme scarcity and difficulties. Therefore, Spasic’s endowment edifices represent important testimony of the genesis of Serbian capital urban tissue. The creation of modern city and an uncritical hostile attitude toward the monuments of the epoch of academism, as well as the insufficiently researched field of our recent architectural past, have altogether made that many of valuable buildings have been destroyed or lost over the time. Because of carelessness and ignorance, Spasic’s endowment edifices sank into oblivion and reached us as neglected and of changed form. Nowadays, when the professional architectural revision of the role of the past is undertaken the researches of these important monuments, their evaluation and quality contribute to the creation of the proper critical judgment about our architecture.