Architecture of Serbia
The territories of medieval Serbia would often shift during this period, which would leave many Serb architectural works in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and parts of Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, and Romania.
The external designs of the church buildings were done in romanesque style, indicating direct links with the seaside, Adriatic coastal towns (Kotor, Dubrovnik and others), which were under Nemanjić's control at the time.
Most notable Vardar styled churches and monasteries are due to King Stefan Uroš II Milutin, [7][8] and his wide contribution in ecclesiastic constructions during his reign.
The external design of church buildings is done in a Byzantine style, which is manifested by the use of grey or yellowish stones and red bricks which are usually arranged so that they create decorative patterns on the façade.
Besides the three common ecclesiastical schools, in the northern part of what is today Vojvodina province, there are examples of Hungarian romanesque and early gothic architecture as seen at Arača and Bač Fortress.
Surviving examples had all the common castle features depending on the terrain requirements, such as a bailey, keep (including donjon towers), battlements (crenelations, hordings and machicolations), gatehouses, moats, arrowslits, great halls, etc.
[22] The Log cabin Bondruka is the most popular rural house in the Balkan region, typical for Serbia south of the Danube, and is a further evolution of the log-cabin design seen with Brvnara style.
These are also areas where Zapis, sacred trees in Serbian traditions, originated and are widely practiced, due to most churches and places of Christian worship being demolished by the Ottomans.
Dedicated to St Pantelejmon, the small church was intentionally built in an oak tree, which holds great significance in both Christian and Pagan Serbian culture and mythology.
They use local materials such as mud, bricks, wood, and reed, with finer details crafted and built by traditional artists often utilizing motifs of the many different ethnic groups of Vojvodina.
Renaissance Revival architecture was a short lived movement at the end of the 19th century, mostly relegated to few buildings in Vojvodina province, with fewer examples in southern cities, such as Belgrade and Niš.
There were plans to showcase Byzantine Revival architecture by a sibling architect duo of Petar and Branko Krstić at the Sesquicentennial Exposition of 1926, but due to disagreements between Belgrade and Zagreb cultural scenes, the Expo pavilion was never built.
The Art Nouveau and Vienna Secession style flourished in Serbia, especially in the north of the country at the turn of the 20th century, when the Vojvodina region was still part of the Hungarian kingdom under the Habsburgs.
Other settlements such as Apatin, Aranđelovac, Belgrade, Horgoš, Kikinda, Niš, Novi Sad,[38] Pančevo, Senta, Vrbas, Vrnjačka Banja, and Zrenjanin were not immune from the architectural novelty either.
The residential palaces of the Menrath, Winkler and Adamović families, then the new premises of Synagog, City Hospital, Iodine Spa, Hungarian Gymnasium (demolished to make way for the Mihajlo Pupin Boulevard) and a whole range of other buildings were created under the influence of the new style.
These buildings fitted into the city's historic core, spread to still unbuilt plots of new streets, and were built in the years after the First World War, heralding the modern architecture of the 20th century.
Thanks to the principles of secession, new materials have been introduced into the architecture (concrete, glass, forged iron, ceramics), functional residential and public spaces have been created, façades have been revived with imaginative constructive solutions and new decorative repertoire, and the urban matrix has acquired its present-day appearance.
Most of the Zrenjanin secession buildings were built at the end of the 19th century, at a time of intense economic growth and very vibrant construction activity, which is particularly accelerated before the start of the First World War.
Buildings such as the House of Vuk's Foundation and Old telephone exchange by Branko Tanazević, and Old Post Office by Momir Korunović, showcase the blend of medieval church motifs with modern art nouveau.
[50][51] Air Force Command by Dragiša Brašovan is one of the biggest interwar modernist buildings in Belgrade, and Danube Banovina in Novi Sad of the same architect being the best example of stripped classicism in Serbia.
Other examples took elements of existing modernism designs, such as Czech Cubism and Vienna Secession with the Building of the First Danube Steamboat Society (1926) in Belgrade, contributing to a more eclectic approach to Art Deco in Serbia.
[53] As a socialist state remaining free from the Iron Curtain, Yugoslavia adopted a hybrid identity that combined the architectural, cultural, and political leanings of both Western liberal democracy and Soviet communism.
[54][55][56] Immediately following the Second World War, Yugoslavia's brief association with the Eastern Bloc ushered in a short period of socialist realism, specifically in building architecture.
[57][58] The nation's postwar return to modernism is perhaps best exemplified in Vjenceslav Richter's widely acclaimed 1958 Yugoslavia Pavilion at Expo 58, the open and light nature of which contrasted the much heavier architecture of the Soviet Union.
[64] Besides numerous brutalist buildings in the capital, other notable examples can be found in Novi Sad,[65] Priština, Požarevac, Arilje, Užice, Sremska Mitrovica and other parts of the country.
[66] Brutalism would be a prevalent architectural style in Serbia, changing the design, scale and use of concrete elements in building construction, up until the end of the 20th century with the breakup of Socialist Yugoslavia.
Yugoslav Brutalism in Serbia incorporates elements of modernism, structuralism, metabolism, and constructivism, with later prefabricated buildings moving away from pure exposed concrete brutalist designs.
Big real estate projects, including Sava City and the redevelopment of the Ušće Towers, led the ground, with little respect for the local architecturale heritage.
Before and also after the Yugoslav wars numerous architects left Serbia and continued their work in a number of European, American and African countries, creating several hundreds of building.
[25] In 2015, an agreement was reached with Eagle Hills (a UAE company) on the Belgrade Waterfront (Beograd na vodi) deal, for the construction of a new part of the city on currently undeveloped wasteland by the riverside.
