Three architectural competitions for the Belgrade City Museum design

Abstract

The paper presents three architectural-urbanistic contests organized with the aim of ensuring permanent accommodation for the Belgrade City Museum. Though founded in 1903, the Museum is yet to be assigned a building for its own purposes, and has not instated a permanent exhibition. Relocations have been a constant challenge for the Museum, since it was established and situated in a single room in the former Belgrade Municipality, to its relocation into a building in Zmaj Jovina Street, remaining in this place ever since. Several attempts have been made to solve the issue of its permanent location, including the three architectural-urbanistic competitions. The first two were realized in 1954 and 1976, at the time when the museum building was planned in the area encompassed by Knez Mihailova, Kralja Petra, Uzun Mirkova and Tadeuša Košćuška streets. The third competition, organized in 2016, sought a conceptual design for reconstructing the former Military Academy building in 40b Resavska street, and its conversion into the Belgrade City Museum. This paper is mostly based on the original competition documents, that remain preserved in the Architecture and Urbanism Collection of the Belgrade City Museum.

Keywords

• Belgrade City Museum
• competitions
• architecture
• urban planning
• reconstruction