Branko Pešić (architect)
Branko Pešić (* 1921 in Zemun ; † October 4, 2006 in Linjano ) was a Yugoslav-Serbian architect and university professor. He is known as the author of the Beograđanka , which is a dominant motif of the visual presentation of Belgrade on the "Belgrade Ridge". He is also connected in particular with the resumption of work on the completion of the St. Sava Cathedral , for which he remained the chief architect from 1984 to 2002. For the complex geometry of the Neo-Byzantine building based on the shape and shape of Hagia Sophia , Pešić looked for modern structural solutions by constructing it entirely from reinforced concrete without losing its identity as an Orthodox Church. Pešić's fame as a designer underpinned the lifting of the 4000-tonne, 30.5 m diameter dome, which was built on the ground and pushed to a height of 40 and 77 m respectively using a lift-slab system.
Life
Childhood and youth
Pešić's father was a Serbian officer on the Salonika Front during World War I , while his mother lived in Italy at the time. The parents were linked by a pen friendship during the war. When Pešić's mother returned to Belgrade as a sage, she only really got to know her future husband there. Branko was born in Zemun in 1921, where he remained until he was five. The family then moved to Belgrade to Strahinjića Bana ul. 73 in Dorćol , where he stayed until the end of his primary school years (eight-year-old Osnovna škola). He switched to the 2nd men's high school, one of the most prestigious Belgrade high schools, and became a member of the Sokol Association .
That he should become an architect was the wish of his mother, who took the sixteen year old to Venice. Together they traveled for over a month through Italy, where Branko made the first drawings of facades. The following year his parents sent him to Munich, where he should have enrolled at the Technical University. His mother, who came from Petrinja , spoke good German and regularly received books from there. Although Adolf Hitler ruled, Branko was unreserved. In Munich he lived with the widow Dr. Langner. In addition to the two sons, two lodgers lived here, an American and a Hungarian. Since Ivo Andrić, who later won the Nobel Prize, was Consul General of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in Berlin at the time, Branko's parents asked Branko to contact "čika" Iva, Ivo was a family friend, in an emergency. After the world war broke out on September 1, 1939, this situation occurred and he contacted Andrić, who advised him to go to either Berlin or Yugoslavia. Branko decided to return to Belgrade. In Munich he had made drawings and studies. In Belgrade he is now enrolled at the Technical University. He studied there until April 6, 1941.
Second World War
His father was mobilized as a reserve officer in 1941 and posted to the Zvezdara observation post . Early in the morning on April 6, 1941, the father informed the family, who now lived at Bulevar Kralja Aleksandra near the faculty, that Germany had attacked Yugoslavia. Branko spent the war days with his father on the Zvezdara, where they watched the German planes. The house of the Pešićs was damaged by the bombing and he moved back to Zemun with his mother. The father had been evacuated to Montenegro with the government and army command. During the occupation, Branko practiced watercolor painting. Drawings of the ruins of Belgrade were made. During that time, his mother had little money and kept her head above water by selling objects, including Branko's drawings.
Branko wanted to become a pilot of the People's Liberation Army (NOB) during the war , but was assigned to the construction and development of airfields by the Yugoslav partisans after they learned that he was studying architecture.
Professional career
After the war he continued his interrupted studies. He graduated from the faculty in 1947 with top marks in a very short time. Out of five job offers he decided to take part in the construction of Novi Beograd , where he remained the only one on the team who refused to join the JCP. In 1951 Pešić applied as an assistant at the College of Civil Engineering, and was immediately accepted.
plant
Palata Beograda
Pešić was awarded the contract to build the Beograanka, then known as the Palata Beograda , as the youngest of all participating architects. The building was completed in just three and a half years in the inner city center. Anodized aluminum was used for the programmatic facade, as was the case for two well-known high-rise buildings built at the same time: the Tour Montparnasse in Paris and the Sears Tower in Chicago. Pešić's skyscraper remains smaller, but has the lightest facade of the three similar-looking buildings from this era. It is a symbol of the Belgrade skyline.
Further construction of the St. Sava Cathedral
The further construction of the St. Sava Cathedral in Belgrade formed a special turning point. This was a symbolic act that ended the repressive policy of the one-party system, which systematically prevented all religious building projects of the Serbian Orthodox Church between 1945 and 1985. In particular, the communist leadership of Yugoslavia had hindered the religious life of the Serbian Orthodox Church, as it feared the influence of the Orthodox Church on the believers. Any national sentiments of the Serbs were seen as a danger and aroused fear in communist ideologues, especially when they were on the decline. During that time, larger churches were built only in the larger centers of the Serbian diaspora in the United States, Canada and Australia. Of greatest importance was the death of the former long-time communist dictator Josip Broz Tito in 1980, which initiated a crumbling of the bureaucratic discipline of the communists and the appearance of a pluralistic political system. A completely unexpected turn was the permission to continue building the Cathedral of Saint Sava, which was finally approved on June 19, 1984 after 88 previous official requests from Patriarch German to the state leadership. The project was therefore of the highest symbolic importance. As the church also stands on a plateau on the Vračar hill that can be seen from afar, the building is a dominant motif in the visual presentation of the city. From a technical and performance point of view, the church is a complex mega-construction, whereas symbolically it is a spiritual and cultural center of the Serbian nation and a bastion of the centuries-old Byzantine building tradition, as well as the modern as well as retrospectively oriented national culture.
The Serbian-Orthodox Patriarch German appointed Branko Pešić in 1984 as a student of the first architect Bogdan Nestorović, completely surprisingly, as the architect in the further construction. The building became his practical life's work and was also his late work. Due to the construction plans that were lost during the World War, he had to re-plan them and re-create all structural calculations. Although he stuck to the floor plan and silhouette by specifying the brick walls built in 1941 up to 13 m high, he changed most of the construction. Pešić took over a project that his two predecessors Bogdan Nestorović and Aleksandar Deroko had started in 1935 as a synthesis of the Constantinople Hagia Sophia and national church buildings of the 13th century. Pešić had decided to continue the church as a reinforced concrete structure by neutralizing the previously built brick walls and covering them with modern, flat-profiled facades with white marble. While maintaining the authentic Serbian-Byzantine form, he introduced a modern treatment of facades and volumes that nonetheless retained the identity of an Orthodox Church.
Pešić planned the adaptation and execution of the dome in a double-shell construction with reinforced concrete grating and an external gallery. He had all walls built as reinforced concrete timber chambers. This constructive innovation in a building with complex geometries could only be achieved with prefabricated assembly elements, whereby components of complex three-dimensional shapes were first simplified by dividing them into linearized elements and then joined to three-dimensional shapes in situ. The construction of the large dome was downright revolutionary. The dome, based on the dimensions of Hagia Sophia , was made of reinforced concrete on the ground and pushed to a height of 40 m using a lift-slab system. The event had a great media impact and ensured Pešić's lasting fame as a civil engineer. However, it also subsequently caused severe hostility from some colleagues who disapproved of his personal performance. Today it is generally recognized as a special technical bravura. After the civil wars in Yugoslavia and a UN economic embargo in 1996 no longer allowed further construction, Pešić lost the leading role as architect of the construction site in 2002 with a renewed resumption. However, he remained active in the construction of the building in an advisory capacity for his successor until his death.
Choice of work
- Beograđanka, 1968–1974
- St. Sava Cathedral, 1986–2006
- Saint Petka's Church, Čukarica 2002
literature
- Branko Pešić, 1988: Spomen Hram Sv. Save na Vračaru u Beogradu 1895–1988. Sveti Arhijeriejski Sinod Srpske Pravoslavne Crkve, Beograd.
Web links
- Features by Branko Pešić, the architect and designer of the construction of the St. Sava Cathedral in Večernje Novosti (1) , (2) , (3) , (4) , (5) , (6) , (7)
- Features of the Serbian news magazine NIN on the history of the construction of the Cathedral of St. Sava with an interview with Pešićs [1]
- Documentary from the "Filmske Novosti" archive on the technological performance of IMG "Trudbenik" during the lifting of the dome in 1989 (YouTube: English)
- RTS, Kod dva bela goluba Audio interview with Branko Pesic from 2002 in the series "Kod dva bela goluba"
Individual evidence
- ^ RTS, Kod Dva Bela Goluba Branko Pesic
- ↑ Aleksandar Kadijević, Miroslav Pantović 2014: Between Concept and Identity of the New Serbian Orthodox Ecclesial Architecture. In: Fernández Cobián, Esteban (Ed.) 2014: Between concept and identity. Cambridge Scholars Publications, vol. 19, 119-132. Here p. 119
- ↑ Aleksandar Kadijević, Miroslav Pantović 2014: p. 120
- ↑ Aleksandar Kadijević, Miroslav Pantović 2014: p. 125
- ↑ Aleksandar Kadijević, Miroslav Pantović 2014: p. 125
- ↑ Aleksandar Kadijević, Miroslav Pantović 2014: p. 125
- ↑ Aleksandar Kadijević, Miroslav Pantović 2014: p. 125
- ↑ Aleksandar Kadijević, Miroslav Pantović 2014: p. 125
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Pešić, Branko |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Yugoslav-Serbian architect and university professor |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1921 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Zemun |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 4, 2006 |
| Place of death | Linjano |