Whether because of their outstanding position, unique architectural solution, monumental value or size, certain buildings attain the status of symbol. In the first half of 19th-century Belgrade, such significance was bestowed on the Minster Church, on the Captain Miša Endowment after liberation from the Turks, on the Old Palace in the Kingdom of Serbia, and so on…
By Slobodan – Giša Bogunović |
Any natural phenomenon – a monument, a written or pronounced word, a picture or a distinguished building – may become a symbol if it directs our expectation or interest to something more general than itself, say to philosophers who study the theory of meaning. In contrast to usual signs, symbols direct our observation to something which is constant and not to an individual occurrence. Namely, a symbol most frequently indicates what we call an "idea" or "a notion" – which is why it is always a constant and open invitation to our thinking and affective reaction.
In the line of man’s rarely achieved-desires is the wish to rise to the level of symbol through working or creating "a work". This seldom happens in art while in architecture, which occupies the space where art, technique, aesthetics, and usefulness merge, it seems to occur even less often, while in life, which is subject to all kinds of necessities and extortions, it seems to occur less often still. |
| Yet, at first sight and theoretically, the rule is purely simple – at least in the art of construction. To begin with, a work must not be expressed only through its function, but must exceed it through appearance. It must indicate something above and beyond its mere purpose. Every real architect is also supposed to know that he must not exaggerate aesthetics to the point of surpassing function. But the very thought that his building may attain the level of symbol, or at least a sign, arouses in him a tickling feeling, similar to the feeling of a first love. |
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When the Moscow Hotel was erected at Terazije Square in the early 20th century – projected by Jovan Ilkić and St Petersburg architects – its appearance, dominating position, oversized measurements and general impression, least aroused the notion of a service building that would accommodate guests and travelers. The broad glassed surface of the high ground floor, magnificently lit with Venetian chandeliers, the interior paneled with red marble and the exterior paneled with Swedish granite, and the Hungarian green "zolnai" tiles and majolica – in the spirit of the Russian and Viennese secession – the hotel was least of all the picture of its purpose, and most of all a reflection of metropolitan progress, size and luxury. In contrast to its lowleveled neighbourhood, the Moscow Hotel was superior in every way, like "a pelican in the wilderness" as Lena Jovičić metaphorically put it, and not only in terms of aesthetics. It looked almost surreal: an offspring of hoch Europe in the neighbourhood of one-floor buildings typical of small towns – in the heart of communal chaos and lagging urban plans. Thirty years after its completion, it became the most depicted building in pre-war Belgrade while its presentation on picture postcards had the strength of symbol – powerful enough to replace the panorama and veduta of the capital.
The Moscow retained this position until the completion of the Albania Palace, a skyscraper at the time, erected at Terazije Square in 1938. Though it would itself become a symbol of modern Belgrade, its creation was marked by great resistance, not only for the chosen building site, but also due to an inhospitable patriarchal society unaccustomed to innovation.
The misfortune of the new palace was reflected in the fact that its predecessor, an old tavern building known as the Albania, also conquered the space both physically and symbolically in a different way. Without any special architectural effort and arrangement, without any decorative finesse, and without any "management" in business, it reproduced in the minds of many Belgraders a sentimental picture of the "old city" and its values. Relapses of "cobble stone romance", a belief in grandfathers and in old times, so courageously resisted its destruction that it was postponed several times. When hammers finally buried it in 1936, its guests – barbers, lawyers, peasants, modest craftsmen, idlers, artists and even educated construction engineers and many others –sang a requiem and publicly mourned it.
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| As the Albania Palace, still wrapped in scaffolds, rose up in gigantic form, its construction looked "threatening" to Belgraders and "suggested" catastrophic and sudden collapse. These unfounded fears and dark premonitions were fueled not only by the belief that the modern construction did not fit its ambience, but also by the drainage system being dug in the foundations of the monolithic building with the assistance of new and unusual machines, by the legend of the swampy Terazije terrain, and even the esoteric – the excavation of mammoth fossils from the peat soil of the building site, which the newspapers additionally adorned with "on the banks of the one-time Pannonian Sea". |
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All in all, the decision to construct the Albania Palace, a model of new construction based on the application of modern technical knowledge, bespoke a new tendency in the development of the city’s heart: out of the cobweb of dense ownership boundaries there appeared clear and big lots where construction was undertaken in accord with volume measurements: depth, width and especially height.
When building was completed, the erected palace suddenly displaced this psychosis and unanimously conquered the grace of professional critics. Shaped in the spirit of late modernism, its twelvestory front corpus and lowered wings that spread towards Kolarčeva and Knez Mihajlova streets, covered with marble of dark valeur, this prominent city "tower" represented a unique construction precedent and the first high-rise in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. It soon became representative of a bustling and modern Belgrade – its new symbol. | |
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