Sava Centar (Serbian Cyrillic: Сава центар) is an international congress, cultural and business center of various multi-functional activities located in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. It is the largest audience hall in the country and the entire former Yugoslavia, as well as one of the biggest in Europe. It has hosted numerous large-scale events and performances. In April 2021, the building was declared a cultural monument.
Location Sava Centar is located in Block 19, in the municipality of New Belgrade. It is situated at 9 Milentija Popovića street. The complex is bounded by the streets of Vladimira Popovića to the east, Milentija Popovića to the west and Bulevar Arsenija Čarnijevića to the south. To the north are other buildings, which occupy the northern section of the Block 19, including Crowne Plaza Belgrade and Savograd.
History
Origin In 1975, after the First Conference of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, held in Helsinki, Finland, the President of Yugoslavia Josip Broz Tito accepted for Belgrade to host the next summit. However, Belgrade had no congressional facility which could welcome so many delegates, so it was decided to construct a new building. The author of the project, chief designer and team manager was Stojan Maksimović, who had only one month to submit the concept. He was chief designer of the Belgrade Construction Directorate and was given the task in March 1976, directly from Tito's office. Maksimović spent that month either in seclusion in his office in the City Assembly of Belgrade or on planes, visiting Paris, The Hague (Babylon), Copenhagen and Helsinki to inspect existing facilities of this type. The chief engineer was Radomir Mihajlović, Maksimović's colleague. The urban plan for the area was created by Miloš Perović.
Construction
Work began in April 1976 and after a bit over a year, the building was ceremonially opened on 14 May 1977 by Tito. Construction itself lasted 11 months. Work on the first stage had to be rushed due to the scheduled OSCE conference, planned for 15 June 1977. Today, this date is considered as the birthday of Sava Centar, even though it was technically only the opening of Block A, followed by Block 2 in 1978 and Block 3 in 1979. The second phase, a large performance and conference hall, opened for the 11th Congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. The planned stage at the main hall, which had been envisioned as revolving, was scrapped and a fixed large stage was built instead. By 1979, Hotel Beograd InterContinental, now the Crowne Plaza Belgrade, was added to the complex to host the annual meeting of the World Bank. The interior was designed by Aleksandar Šaletić. Supporting infrastructure such as roads and highway connections were also built during this period around the Sava Centar complex. The complex, due to its design and the speed by which it was finished, attracted international attention. It was among the nominees when the inaugural Pritzker Architecture Prize was awarded in 1979. Local press of the time named it a "spaceship", "a glass garden", "the beauty on the Sava", "a concrete ship of peace", "goodwill house", etc. As the initial construction period overlapped with the finishing works at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the two structures were often compared at the time. While the famous Beaubourg was equally praised and criticized, Maksimović's work on Sava Centar was universally lauded.
Later developments On 17 August 2006, the parking lot at Sava Centar was renovated to a capacity of 410 cars. As a result of the renovation, parking fees were introduced for the first time at Sava Centar but were lifted around 2016/2017. In its jubilee year of 2007, when Sava Centar marked its 30th anniversary, substantial financing was utilized to reconstruct the glass facade. Furthermore, city authorities funded the reconstruction of broken glass on the sideways-facing facade, the acquisition of stage audio equipment for concert appearances and the replacement of seats in the main halls.
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