Dobrovic, Nikola

Dobrović, Nikola 

Born Feb. 12, 1897, in Pec, Hun-gary; died Jan. 11, 1967, in Belgrade. Serbian architect.

Dobrovic graduated from the Higher Technical School in Prague in 1923. During World War II he participated in the national liberation movement in Yugoslavia. He was director of the Serbian Urban Planning Institute and chief architect of Belgrade from 1946 and a member of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences from 1965. Dobrovic, a professor in the department of architecture at the University of Belgrade since 1948, developed the urban planning principles of New Belgrade (late 1940’s; he received the October Prize of the City of Belgrade in 1968) and the general plans of the cities of Stip (1952) and Hercegnovi (1957). He designed a number of public buildings that are characterized by emotional expressiveness, large simple forms, and functional planning—for example, a hotel on Lake Lopud near Dubrovnik, 1936, and the administrative buildings in Belgrade, 1957-62, for which he was awarded the October Prize of the City of Belgrade.