How the party shortened the stage

I don't know if for today's students of architecture the term "Great Neufert" is as important as it was in the early fifties of the last century. It was a scripture in which there was an answer to every question in the profession. Designing could not be started without that book. At that time, I not only wanted to become an architect, but I already imagined myself as a professor at the Faculty of Architecture who teaches design geometry as a philosophy of space. I owned the original, German version, which was rare in Yugoslavia, but it was later titled Architectural design that textbook is also printed here.

Ernst Neufert (ernst neufert, 1900 1986) started working as a mason at the age of seventeen. I think that is partly why he succeeded so perfectly in describing the work of an architect in detail, and not just the theoretical work of a designer behind a drawing board with rulers and a compass. Neufert described every step on the construction site, what should be thought about when designing, what rules, scale, ideas the architect should adhere to. He worked at the Bauhaus institution, was an assistant to its founder, the great architect Walter Gropius, but became famous with the textbook Architectural design (Construction design theory), who were mostly called "Great Neufert". He writes in detail about norms and regulations for all possible buildings, for example, how to design hospitals, residential buildings, factories, fire stations, churches, concert halls, theaters with a hall designed for a certain number of spectators, how many square meters should an auditorium have , how much space is needed for the halls, what should be the toilets for the audience, exits in case of fire, dimensions of the stage and technical rooms, dressing rooms, rehearsal rooms, offices... He described all of this in such detail that he mocked, because, among other things, he also wrote down how tall the puppy should be for a Belgian wolfdog when it raises its ears. He modestly called that book, whose first edition was printed in 1936, a handbook. He had already moved to America, he was surprised that it quickly became an indispensable textbook, so he returned to Germany. His work has been translated into eighteen languages ​​and has sold more than 800.000 copies to date.

HOW THEY STOLE THE STAGE: I gave up my dream of becoming an architect a long time ago when I got an apartment on the fourth floor of a new building in Draže Pavlovića Street in the early 1960s. Below me on the third floor in a studio apartment lived an architecture student, a native of Subotica, five years younger than me. He borrowed that book from me, and he never returned it. His first independent project was the restaurant "Ušće" on the banks of the Sava. He followed Neufert's instructions exactly for that type of facility. He went on the path to fame, became one of the great architects recognized all over the world, and has been living in America for decades, where he has his own office. I don't know if he still uses Neufert, if he kept that German copy of mine. His name is Stojan Maksimović, and one of his masterpieces is the Sava Center in Belgrade.

I once asked him jokingly: "Why did you steal Neufert from me if you didn't learn what the ratio of depth and width of a stage should be?" Namely, the stage of the great hall is too shallow, which is always a problem for the scenography of large plays. "I know everything," he justified himself with a laugh, "but they stole fifteen meters from me at the last moment!"

He explained that according to the highest order, due to party and other congresses during construction, he had to change the project and enlarge the foyer, and he had nowhere to take the space, except at the expense of the stage. Because of this, he had to abandon the installation of a rotary stage, which is needed for quick scenery changes. He also wanted to keep a natural stream that would gurgle through the back of the building with offices and smaller halls, but they ordered to build an office space instead.

This is how investors ruin ideas, but this is not the case only here.

CONVENTION CENTER INSTEAD OF THE NEW OPERA: The problem I often come across is that search engines are poor in our language. While preparing to write this text, I did not manage to find the names of the first directors of the Sava Center, as well as the competition for the project of the opera in Belgrade, which was supposed to stand in the place where the Sava Center is today. I haven't found any information about the building bureau of that opera house that existed in the National Theater right above my office. I have to rely on memory, so I can make mistakes, so I apologize in advance. In some archives, of course, all this information is hidden, but it would take too much time and effort to trace it all.

An international competition was announced for the opera and one project actually won the first prize. I followed everything carefully because from 1968 to 1974 I was the assistant manager of the Belgrade National Theater, which included - and still does today - the opera. The bureau for the construction of the opera was supposed to prepare the construction of the opera according to the awarded work in agreement with the awarded designer. I was still interested in architecture, I am still interested today, I still draw projects for apartments, villas, and even entire islands for myself.

Our role model then was the Sydney Opera House. The conceptual sketch for it was made by the Danish architect Jern Ucon (Jörn Utzon) made in 1957. The idea for this unique building came to him when he was peeling an orange, he quickly sketched a rough roof in the form of huge shells stacked on top of each other. Today it is one of the most recognizable buildings in the world, but when construction was supposed to start on the basis of Ucon's project, the contractors said that it was impossible, statically unsolvable. New systems for pouring concrete, new cranes, new formwork had to be invented, in the middle of the work Ucon fell out with everyone and left Sydney convinced that he had gotten himself into something impossible. The construction lasted three times longer, the price was fourteen times higher than planned. Ucon commented: "The cathedral of Chartres was built for a hundred years, and no one asked the price."

When the Sydney Opera House was finally due to open in 1973, it turned out that everyone missed the fact that there was no parking for visitors. I remembered the experience when, as a student of a secondary technical school, an old bricklayer of Hungarian origin explained to me in his impossible dialect: "The bricklayer who looks at the plan, cannot close his eyes and walk through the finished building, is not a good bricklayer." Great architects don't think like that, they often imagine an ingenious facade first, and only then deal with such little things as life in a finished building, in a "finished building", as my bricklayer from Banat said, or where people park. In Sydney, the problem was quickly temporarily solved by bringing an old aircraft carrier into the immediate vicinity and arranging a parking lot on it.

I immediately criticized the award-winning project of the new Belgrade Opera House, saying that I don't know how to wash the huge, crooked, glass surfaces that were supposed to cover the building so that it would shine like a huge diamond in the setting sun. That problem did not arise because someone at the highest political level decided that the opera was not a priority, and that a congress center should be built on that excellent location.

TITO OPENS SAVA CENTER: The construction of the Sava Center as a multifunctional, congress, cultural and business facility, according to the project of Stojan Maksimović, began in 1976. As soon as the works began, the authorities began to rush things, so Tito opened the large hall already on May 15, 1977, and the XI Congress of the Union of Communists of Yugoslavia, the last one in which Tito participated, was held from June 20 to 23 1978. I note that the works were not yet finished, they will take more than a year. Today, one thinks about the speed with which large construction projects were completed in the "Brosomorous era". I also remember the 140-kilometer Zagreb-Ljubljana highway that was built in 1968 months in 9, so I compare it with today's deadlines, with the opening of sections kilometer by kilometer incomparably slower despite much more modern construction machines.

When the construction was completed, the Sava Center was a unique facility in this part of Europe both in terms of its versatile capabilities and modern architecture. At that time, I was an advisor to the Yugoslav Embassy in Bonn, I knew that my job would expire in the fall of 1978, I was thinking about what I would do after that, and one of my ideas was to find myself at the head of the Sava Center, so that's why I followed everything about him with special interest. I thought that someone who has experience with theaters, but also with diplomacy, could be the director. Soon, however, I found out who would be the director, so I gave up on that idea, without ever telling anyone about it.

ACOUSTICS AND OTHER PROBLEMS: Whenever the Sava Center is mentioned, most of us think of its large, festive hall. I have already talked about the stage, but its second problem is the acoustics, it is not well solved, and it seems to me that it is impossible to solve it in a natural way. I have been to the Metropolitan Opera House in New York and the Great Hall of the Kremlin. The Great Hall of the Sava Center has 3.672 seats, the Metropolitan Opera has 3.800 seats, but the Congress Hall in the Kremlin, which hosts both opera and ballet performances, can accommodate 6.000 visitors. Electronic assistance for acoustics is necessary in all those halls, in Moscow they allowed me to walk along the ground floor of the hall during a dress rehearsal of the orchestra. The sound was perfect and uniform everywhere, this is called a "homogeneous sound field" in the profession, and on the programs the name of the sound engineer for a particular performance was right below the conductor's name. The tone is completely natural in Moscow and New York, in the Sava Center, unfortunately, so far it does not seem like that, but is heard coming from the speakers. When someone takes over the entire complex, they could turn to Moscow for help, as it did for the painting of the Saint Sava Temple in Vračar. The problem needs to be identified first, but it can certainly be solved. There are a lot of words about acoustics and in "Great Neufert", there are also pictures, for example, how the spoken word of a man standing on a balcony reaches another standing below him, but I assume that this has been overcome today, today the answers to all questions are given by the computer based on their programs, not a printed textbook.

The large hall and foyer are located in the so-called building B, facing the Sava. In the foyer - for the enlarged space of which 15 meters of the stage were "stolen" from Maksimović - a reception can be organized for about 4.000 visitors, and there is also a sufficient number of salons for special guests. In building A, which faces the opposite side, there are 13 more conference rooms with 80 to 1.000 seats. We know them from television because they host almost all important gatherings of political parties and many organizations. For them, there is a sufficient number of offices for short-term or long-term rental, telecommunication possibilities, exhibition space, media rooms, the possibility of translation into 8 languages, and of course everything that goes with it - heating, ventilation, workshops and space for smaller commercial exhibitions and luxury shops.

In the once peaceful times, when I had a slightly higher income than was necessary for a bare life, we would simply come to the Sava center to take a walk and see what was offered in terms of more exclusive goods, then we would sit in one of the numerous cafes or restaurants. It was like going to "shopping malls" today. All of that needs to be maintained, renting out as many rooms as possible for as long as possible is a huge task, if the capacities are not used, the real costs of survival cannot be covered, let alone modernizing all the installations. Sava Center fell little by little into ever-increasing debts.

SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC OPENS THE ARENA: The management of the Sava Center is not the only one to blame, although it increasingly fell into unprofessional hands appointed along party lines but according to who came to power, and competition also appeared. The Arena, which is now called "Stark Arena" after the confectionary company, was built for large and largest gatherings. It should be remembered that the Arena for Slobodan Milošević was something similar to the Sava Center during Tito's time. As far as I remember, the first big gathering was Milosevic's pre-election rally on October 20, 2000, at a time when his downfall was already looming. However, unlike the Sava Center, the Arena was developing; not only concerts are held in it today, but almost all sports, music or political manifestations. The arena can be adapted to any imaginable need, it has 18.386 seats with 68 luxury boxes.

A whole series of hotels of the highest categories have been built in Belgrade, which also have conference rooms and offer everything necessary for holding gatherings of rich clientele.

DEMOLITION OR INVEST: All this is great for Belgrade and Serbia, but it is fatal for the Sava Center. Although the city wrote off most of its debts at the end of 2017, that institution owed RSD 558,8 million at the end of January, according to Blic. Some experts believe that this concept of congress centers is outdated. In rich countries, for example in the USA or Germany, they would mercilessly demolish such a complex and build something new in such a good location, something that will pay off. I think that such a decision would be terrible because the architecture of the center is excellent, it is worth protecting, and luckily - maybe for other reasons - the authorities in Belgrade think so too. They are looking for a business partner. A tender was announced for taking over 49 percent of the Sava Center, only two bidders came forward, Delta Holding and the consortium Aerodrom "Nikola Tesla", Energoprojekt and the Belgrade Fair. That attempt failed. It was again offered to establish a joint company in which the city of Belgrade would have 51 percent and for that it would give the building, equipment in its current state and land, and the other party at least 12,5 million euros and a management plan, and would take over the management and risk. The deadline for the offer was January 31 of this year. About two hundred employees, as well as interested citizens of Belgrade, were anxiously waiting to see if anyone would sign up to take a bite of that apple, which seems to be quite sour, although there may still be a lot of juice in it. Only one bidder applied, again Delta Holding, which said that 12,5 million euros was too little, that it offered double, namely 25 million euros and the construction of a new hotel that will be connected to the center, and that company also has other big hotel in the immediate vicinity.

The offer looks fantastic. Someone does not offer less than what is minimally required, does not want to bargain, on the contrary, promises twice as much, assumes all the risk for ten years, and is known based on experience to have "golden hands", everything that he has reached so far, it was successful both in Serbia and in numerous other countries.

It seems to be an ideal solution, but that offer has one flaw that can be tragic for saving the Sava Center - the president of Delta Holding is Miroslav Mišković, the projected state enemy number one.

Serbia does not reject with disgust the tax that Delta Holding, unlike many other large organizations, regularly pays into the state coffers. Will the city of Belgrade with disgust reject an apparently very favorable offer just because there are those who don't like Miroslav Mišković?