The Palace of Serbia () is a building located in the Novi Beograd municipality of Belgrade, Serbia. The building is used by the government of Serbia and currently houses several cabinet level ministries and agencies.
Name
The technical name of the building is Federal Executive Council 1 (; abbr. SIV 1) as it was used by the Federal Executive Council of Yugoslavia. Later, it was informally known as the Palace of the Federation () before given its present name.
After the construction was finished, the building was named "The Palace of the Federation", but colloquially and sometimes even officially it referred to as SIV and SIV 1 (after the construction of the buildings SIV 2 and SIV 3). After the disintegration of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, only the name "Palace of Federation" was used, and after the secession of Montenegro in 2006, the building got its unofficial name "Palace of Serbia", although it has never been officially renamed.
Location
The building is located in the neighborhood of Ušće, and belongs to the "Block 13" in the New Belgrade's block numeration system. It stretches between two boulevards named after the scientist, of Mihajlo Pupin on the south, and of Nikola Tesla, on the north. On the west and east it is surrounded by the Ušće park.
History
Architectural design competition for the new building of the Presidency of Yugoslavia was announced in 1946. The accepted project from the group of architects from Zagreb included the exterior 'H' shape designed by lead architect Vladimir Potočnjak and his team: Anton Urlih, Zlatko Nojman and Dragica Perak. Construction officially began in the summer of 1948 but was halted only a year later. By that time, only the "skeletons" of the side wings and part of the central annex were finished.
The Palace was initially conceived as the part of the public ensemble of public buildings, but such programme was reduced by the adoption of the General Urban Plan of the City of Belgrade in 1950, according to which the Palace, along with the hotel “Yugoslavia”, remained secluded on the right bank of the Danube. Other projected objects next to it included the Museum of the Revolution, in the section between the building and the modern Ušće Tower, and the building of the Radio Television Belgrade, in the section to the modern Bulevar umetnosti. The idea was scrapped but in 2017 it was announced the foundations of the proposed museum, constructed in 1978, will be used for the future building of the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra. The construction progressed until Potočnjak's death in 1952. The project was taken over by Mihailo Janković who designed the interior of the structure and oversaw its construction from the resumed works in 1955 until completion in 1959. It was built by the "Rad" construction company.
With the decision to continue the construction, finishing the project was entrusted to the Belgrade architect Mihailo Janković, and to the architectural design office “Stadion”, under which supervision the building was realized in the period from 1955 to 1961. On that covered and sandy soil, the building was constructed by the Youth work brigades from all around Yugoslavia. Janković significantly changed the original design by adding some new elements and not leaving much of the original project, except for the overal H shape. The central annex on the river side was demolished and instead of one main entrance, two were projected, with the ceremonial one being the one in the modern Bulevar Mihajla Pupina. The design by an architect Janković and his team also brought in significant changes in interior organization. He kept the urban disposition, basic measures and mutual relations of certain tracts from the original design, whereas the main changes concerned the interior spatial organization. According to the altered design, the central part with the Banquet Hall, all the annexes around the building as well as the façade were constructed. By shifting the main entrance to the southern side, the entire building got accentuated orientation towards the future settlement. Along with the representative hall placed on the first floor of the newly designed annex, a number of extra lounges, conference halls, twenty-eight cabinets for the members of the Federal Executive Council, about sixty offices for the administration, as well as the following space for garaging vehicles were anticipated by the new programme of the interior design.