Among the architectural competitions that were announced for state institutions in Belgrade during the 1930s, was the competition for the State Printing House from 1933, in which many leading Yugoslav architects participated. The need for new civil service facilities most often arose due to insufficient or inadequate space capacity, which was the case with the State Printing House, which operated in several facilities and whose main building in Pop Luka Street was scheduled for demolition due to the construction of an access street to the future Bridge of King Alexander I. As a result, a competition was announced for the new building of the printing house in April 1933, and a plot near the Kalenić market (between Njegoševa and Mileševska streets) was determined for the location. Later, new locations were chosen for the implementation of the first awarded work, although different urban parameters of the original location were relevant in the preparation of the competition designs. For that reason, Zloković’s solution tends to be more horizontal and with lower structure, which consists of two functional units. The parallelopiped shape of the front volume is dynamized by beveling the sides of the rear body and placing a roof canopy on the retracted top floor. In this project, too, Zloković remains consistent in examining the proportional relationships of window openings in relation to the whole structure and its surface, in this case by combining three different opening heights in a repeated vertical rhythm (A-A-B-C), which in relation to long strip windows or curtain wall, which Zloković never used in its architecture, gives the possibility for form expression and spatial modulation using geometric rules.
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo
1928–1931
A significant achievement of Milan Zloković in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is related to the completion of the first phase of his work, is the building of the State Mortgage Bank in Sarajevo, awarded the second prize of the first rank.
