Momir Korunović

Momir Korunović (Момир Коруновић), was a Serbian architect best-known for his projects built in Serbo-Byzantine Revival. He was sometimes called the Serbian Gaudi. Although he designed some of the most beautiful buildings in Belgrade and was the leading architect of sacred buildings in Yugoslavia between the two world wars, today he is insufficiently known to the general public. Many of his works were destroyed or substantially altered during World War II and the period of communist dictatorship.

Biography
Momir Korunović was born on April 17, 1883 in Jagodina. He spent a lot of time in the village of Glogovac, where his father Prota Petar Korunović served. Korunović's father was a priest and he grew up in a patriarchal Serbian home in a rural environment. Korunović finished his higher education in Belgrade and went on to finish postgraduate studies at Czech Technical University in Prague, after being granted a scholarship provided by Ministry of Education of Serbia. Even during his studies, he formed a distinctive personal style that he would continue to develop throughout his career.

After the outbreak of the First Balkan War, he was mobilized and participated in the battles against the Turks, for which he received the Gold Medal for bravery. The experience from the war will influence Korunović to take an authentic Serbian point of view when to comes to architecture. He participated in a series of battles during the First World War and retreated through Albania with the Royal Serbian Army and people. During the war, he continued to make sketches and designs for subsequent projects.

In addition to working in the civil service as a government official in the Ministry of Construction, Korunović was also a prominent member of the Pan-Slavic organization Sokol, head of the Belgrade Sokol Society "Matica" and was responsible for construction of about thirty Sokol movement buildings in Serbia. In 1926, he was the youngest member of the commission for the construction of the Church of Saint Sava. He participated in the "Salon of Architecture" exhibition in 1929. Among the many excellent architects of that era, mostly architects of modernism, he was a representative of traditional architecture and romanticism.

During the occupation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, he continued to work in the ministry. He retired in 1942. After the war, in the new state, he spent his retirement days in his house in Vračar, where he mostly wrote his memories and illustrated earlier publications.

He is the architect whose works were the most destroyed during the occupation of Yugoslavia and in socialist Yugoslavia.

He died on April 17, 1969 in Belgrade. He was buried in the village of Bogava.

Projects
Korunović build the Belgrade city center for physical culture "Stari DIF", located on Deligradska street in Savski Venac municipality. The project was built for the needs of the Sokol Society "Matica" between 1929 and 1936. He also designed a stadium ("Sokol stadium") for the 1930 Sokol manifestation in Belgrade. The stadium was located on the site of today's Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. The stadium accommodated around 40,000 spectators. It had arched entrances, four for the audience and three for athletes. On the north side, there was a music pavilion in the form of an arched tribune, with towers in the background, decorated with the symbols of the All-Slavic Sokol movement. On the south side was the royal lodge. For this project, he was awarded the Order of Saint Sava. The Seismological Institute Building and the Post-Telegraph-Telephone Museum are also the work of Momir Korunović as well as many churches, monuments (for example, Zebrnjak and Memorial Ossuary, Mačkov kamen) and other prominent buildings, with total of 143 authored projects.

In 1922 Korunović was entrusted with the task of renovating the semi-circular one-story building built for the needs of the palace guard to make it suitable for guests coming to Belgrade for the royal wedding of King Alexander I Karađorđević and Princess Maria of Romania. The semicircular wings were kept for accommodations while the rest of the building was assigned to the Marshal of the Court. The building was demolished in 1953 by the communist authorities. The old Post Office has also been altered beyond recognition. The new, communist authorities, considered its façade "too bourgeois" so they removed the remains of the façade and reconstructed only the skeletal architecture under it, which suited the style of the Socialist realism which was pushed by the government in the immediate post-war period.

Literature

 * Đurić Zamolo, Divna, Graditelji Beograda, 1815-1914
 * Kadijević, Aleksandar, Momir Korunović, 1996