Nikola Dobrovià(, ; 12 February 1897 â 11 January 1967) was a Serbian architect, teacher, and urban planner. Dobroviàdesigned a number of buildings including the Yugoslav Ministry of Defence building, later destroyed during the Kosovar War by NATO bombings, the New Belgrade planned city or various buildings in Prague and around Dubrovnik.
Dobroviàwas born in the Hungarian city of Pécs, 1897. He started studying in Budapest but the First World War interrupted his studies and he finished them in 1923 at the Czech Technical University in Prague, where he obtained a degree in architecture.
He gained experience in prominent Prague architectural offices (BoÃÂhuÃÂmil HübÃÂschÃÂmann, AnÃÂtonÃÂn Engel, Duà ¡ek, KoÃÂzák & Maca) and in his own practice. Among his works in Prague belong co-authorship of the Palace Avion on the prominent Wenceslas Square with BohumÃÂr Kozák (1926) or modernist student dormitories of King Alexander I (now called Komensky dormitories) in Stà Âeà ¡ovice (1933).
Dobroviàmoved to Dubrovnik in the early nineteen-thirties with the radical, programmatic mission of bringing modern architecture to this small but historically very important city on the Dalmatian coast. He was invited in 1930 by Dubrovnik municipal conservator Kosta StrajniÃÂ, well known as the author of the first monographs on Joà ¾e PleÃÂnik and the sculptor Ivan Meà ¡troviÃÂ, to explain to the authorities what modern architecture actually was. To depict in the local press the exemplary architecture that would be suited to the so-called new, modern Dubrovnik, Strajniàput forward DobroviÃÂ's radical project for hotel-Kursalon on Pile, in close proximity to the most monumental part of the medieval city walls, as an alternative to the eclectic project by the Viennese architect Alfred Keller.
His most famous buildings are located in the Serbian capital, Belgrade. DobroviÃÂ created the first sketches for the planned city of New Belgrade as early as 1946 and now is the municipality of the same name home to around 200 thousand inhabitans. Among his notable works is the General Staff Building, constructed between 1955 and 1965 and heavily damaged during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. The structure later became a symbol of the bombing of Serbia and has often been used as a backdrop for ultranationalist protests.