Rental office building of the Mortgage Bank of the Trade Fund, Palace “Albania” (H.B.T.)

After the demolition of the Albania tavern, located on the corner of Kolarčeva and Knez Mihajlova streets, a well-known meeting place for many Belgraders, which they called a mockery and unhygienic place in the city center, the question arose as to what should be built in that important location in the capital. In a poll conducted by the daily Vreme in October 1936. among several prominent Belgrade architects about what they saw on the site of a demolished cafe and what would be the starting points for a new solution, Milan Zloković said that a “building” should be erected on that prominent corner of downtown Belgrade which will conjure up a passage of New York’s Rockefeller City on a smaller scale “, performed in such a way that it is generally accessible with its disposition and purpose. Zloković advocated that the present dilemmas in the professional and general public be resolved by announcing an architectural competition for the conceptual design, which was done in mid-January 1938, when the Mortgage Bank of the Trade Fund in Belgrade announced a competition for a conceptual sketch for a new building to be a monumental builtind with regard to the shape, value and characteristics of the location. In the functional sense, the building would be a business-administrative building with space for rent, and according to the conditions of the competition, it was envisaged to have a ground floor, mezzanine and seven floors. Dozens of Yugoslav architects participated in the competition, proposing various solutions, among which the solution of the architect Zloković on a distinctly modern architectural treatment of a specific urban situation remained noticeable. Zloković emphasized the angular position of the building with a slender rounded tower of eighteen floors that grows organically from the lower part fitted into the block structure. The building conceived in this way would be an urban landmark and a city lookout point of the modern city, enriched by the architect Zloković with his realizations.