King Alexander I Student Residence

The residence was built in 1927–1928 according to the design of the Russian architect Georgy Pavlovich Kovalevsky. Georgy Kovalevsky was a Russian architect and urban planner whose professional biography was from the outset connected with the theory and practice of city planning. After the revolution, Kovalevsky continued his career in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia: he worked at the Ministry of Construction, developed the master plan of Belgrade, and received the Grand Prix at the Paris Exhibition of 1925 for his project for the development of the capital. His designs include the King Alexander I Student Residence — in collaboration with V. V. Lukomsky — the covered market in Kragujevac, the architectural treatment of the terrace of the Kalemegdan Fortress, as well as development plans for a number of Yugoslav cities and parks, including Topčider Park.

The King Alexander I Student Residence stands freely, with a monumental and complex ground plan, and looks not like a temporary dormitory, but like a serious urban institution. This is important: in the late 1920s, the state for the first time shaped the “student residence” as an institution of care. For the student here is nothing less than an investment in the happy future of the new state.

We have looked at the house of law and the house of students — and now we turn eastward, toward the house of the exact sciences.