ARCHITECTURAL

MODERNISM IN
SERBIA
Architectural modernism
 The term “architectural modernism” nowadays generally
denotes the breach with traditional forms and techniques
of construction. Modern architecture appeared in Serbia
at the time when the greater part of cult buildings and
cult competition projects of the European architectural
avant-guarde had already been completed. The birth and
development of modern architecture in Serbia was a
complex process and it can be followed on different
levels, through numerous events of varying intensity and
significance.
 It comprised cross-influences of the intellectual circle of
artistic avant-garde around the journal “Zenit”, the return
from abroad of the first post war generation of Serbian
architects from studies and specializations abroad, the
work of foreign architects who had decided, for different
reasons, to spend a part of their lives in Yugoslavia,
study and monograph exhibitions of architectural
artworks of foreign artists organized within international
cultural exchange programs or by avant-garde
movements as an aspect of their struggle for the
acceptance of new tendencies in the visual world.
 During the early, formative period of Serbian
architectural modernism, in the attempts to
liberate the spirit in order to percieve the new
visual world of artistic avant-garde, painting and
sculpture exhibitions were as important as those
of architectural achievements.
Belgrade after World War I

 After World War I Belgrade offered a strange

social picture. Educated citizens had different
cultural needs and different criteria, moving from
villages and small towns to Belgrade as the
biggest cultural center with an accelerating
urbanization. Immediately after World War I,
Belgrade had about 120.000 inhabitants; in 1931
the number rose to 260.000 and before the
beginning of World War II there were 320.000
people living in the city.
“Zenit”
 The first event in creating a radically new modern
movement in Serbia was in 1923, when editorial board of
art magazine “Zenit” moved to Belgrade. They were the
first to publish in their journal some of the most important
avant-garde architectural achievements of Tatlin, Loos,
Mendelsohn, Theo van Doesburg and Cornelius van
Eesteren and texts which introduced Le Corbusier and
Melnikov. Owing the fonder of “Zenit” Ljubomir Micich,
the citizens of Belgrade were the first time able to see
works of unconventional art.
Group of Architects of Modernist
Orientation
 On November 12, 1928, in Belgrade was founded the
Group of Architects of Modernist Orientation. Co-
founders of the group were: Milan Zlokovich, Branislav
Kojich, Jan Dubovy and Dushan Babich. All four of them
had either studied abroad or completed specialized
courses outside Yugoslavia. Milan Zlokovich studied in
Graz; between 1921 and 1923 he was in Paris at L´Ecole
Superieure des Arts et Metiers. In the period between
1918 and 1921 Kojich studied and graduated at L`Ecole
Centrale des Arts et Manufactures. Jan Dubovy studied
in Prague, and Dushan Babich earned his diploma in
Viena.
 The Group was established in order to fight for
the principles of modern architecture and
rational building through projects, executed
buildings and public presentations at exhibitions
and lectures and through publication of projects.
Besides the founders of the Group, were:
Dragisha Brashovan, Petar and Branko Krstich
and Momchilo Belobrk. Dragisha Brashovan´s
association with the group was percieved as a
great victory for architectural modernism.
 The group organized few exhibitions: The First
Salon of Architecture (1929), the First Yugoslav
Salon of Contemporary Architecture (1931) and
the Second Yugoslav Salon of Contemporary
Architecture (1933). The Group exhibited in
Prague in 1930-s.
Milan Zlokovic
Branislav Kojic
Jan Dubovy
Dusan Babic
 The Group was dissolved in February 1934,
after barely five years since the founding. It
was concluded that the goal of the Group has
been achieved and it could no longer serve
the needs of contemporary architecture.
Dragisa Brasovan
Petar and Branko Krstic
Momcilo Belobrk
Djordje Tabakovic
Triumph of Modern movement in
Serbia
 The first great success of architectural modernism in
Serbia was the triumph of a modernistically conceived
projects in its extremely radical variant – Nikola
Dobrovich´s International competition entry for the
Terazije Plateau in Belgrade, in 1930. It happened only
three years after the jury of the international competition
for the League of Nations Building in Geneva (1927)
agreed to discuss a modernist project, the work of Le
Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret; this was the first time in
the history of architecture that a modernist project
considered for the first prize, causing a public scandal
Dobrovic: Terazije Plateau in Belgrade
Modernism and traditional architecture
 Architectural Modernism in Serbia,
however, was not part of an avant-garde,
as in those countries where it orininated,
but contained its basic elements. The
causes should be looked for in the current
social climate, profound conservativism
and the education, as well as the social
status of Serbian architects. Unlike
European avant-guarde representatives,
Serbian architects belonged to the upper
middle classes.
 They were educated as architects in
conservative schools, such as Viennese
Akademie der bildenden Kuenste. A
specific problem these well-to-do people
did not want to raise was the fact that in
their country participation in the artistic
avant-garde was understood as
propagation of Russian Soviet interests.
 For Serbian architects, architectural modernism
was not a breach with the past and an
instrument for creating a new social order. They
were satisfied with the existing social and
political order. Modern architecture in Serbia,
within the Kingdom of Yugoslavia as in the
neighboring kingdoms of Greece and Romania,
did not gradually “emerge out of geniune social
needs and painstaking struggles and
experiments of architects and artists. It was
imposed by a part of the intellectual elite who
wanted a faster modernization of living and
behaved as its obvious symbol.”
 For them, Modernism was part of the ideology of
Europeanization. Loss of commissions and
therefore an imperiled income, made even the
founders of the Group of Architects of Modernist
Orientation, Milan Zlokovich and Branislav
Kojich, accept requests for traditional academic
and even very conservative works.
Nikola Dobrovic
 The early 1930´s were of crucial importance for
the Serbian architectural modernism. Creative
individuals were pressed between tradition and
avant-garde, between successful Modernist
attempts and doubts about the utility of those
efforts; some even deliberated about giving up
and reverting to the old visual system. In those
aesthetically unstable times, only one Serbian
architect, who came from outside beyond the
mainstream of the Serbian architectural scene,
propagated an unyielding faith in Modernism.
 He was so firm in his convictions that he was
ready to risk losing a job or abandon it if
prevented from implementing the principles of
modern architecture in his own way. This man
was Nikola Dobrovich. Hi studied architecture in
Budapest and Prague. His visual world was
radically different from the visual world of the
members of the Group of Architects of Modernist
Orientation.
Dobrovich stepped onto the Belgrade architectural scene
when he was only 33 years old, with a sensational
triumph at the competition of Terazije Plateau. But, few
years later, economic crisis that came to Europe from
America prevented the realization of his projects in
Belgrade, and he returned to his small studio in Prague.
In 1934, he moved to Dubrovnik, Croatia.

In the magazine “Het Bouwbedrijf”, Theo van Doesburg

wrote about Dobrovich as a supporter of the new in
architecture, a champion of the extreme left of
architectural avant-garde, influenced by Zenitism.
Period after the World War II
 When the communists came to power after the
World War II, the professional careers of the
fathers of Serbian architectural modernism were
all about finished. They ended their creative
work although most of them were only just over
fourty. They could not get accustomed to the
ideological and visual world of Socialist Realism.
 With some exceptions, they retained respectable
social positions; some of them became
university professors, members of the Serbian
Acadeny of Sciences and Arts, indulged in
scholarly research, wrote books, but there was
no creative building they were fit for. Unable to
understand the new age, even when some of
them did build, they made professionally
immaculate but cold and uninventive houses that
did not reveal a single trace of their former
ambition or skill.
 A comparison with universally known architects
can bring one closer to understand the
dimensions of these creative and personal
looses. It is hard to imagine what place in the
history of architecture would have Frank Lloyd
Wright, Mies van der Rohe or Le Corbusier had
stopped their creative development at the age of
fourty-two or fourty-three, as was the case with
Branislav Kojich and Milan Zlokovich.
 The only one from that generation of Serbian
architects whose creativity survived the World
War II and the arrival of the communists was
Nikola Dobrovich. Between 1954 and 1963 he
built in Belgrade his masterpiece – the Ministry
of Defence Headquarters.
Dobrovic: New Belgrade plan
Ministry of Defence Headquarters