Viktor Kovačić

Viktor Kovačić (1874–1924) was a Croatian architect. His projects are marked with subtle purity of reduced elements of historicism, like in monumental Stock Exchange Palace (Croatian: Palača Burze, today the Croatian National Bank headquarters) in Zagreb, 1924. The modern Croatian architecture appeared with Viktor Kovačić who was the first to speak against historicism and represented the idea that architecture must be individual and modern, but also practical and comfortable. From the thirties the works of “Zagreb school of architecture" can stand alongside the best world architecture. They are especially interesting because of merging of two opposite directions in architecture of those days – functionalist and organic.

He was born in a small village of Lučen Dol to a peasant family in 1874. He eventually moved to Graz, where he spent his education. At age of seventeen, he came to Zagreb and worked as an apprentice to Herman Bolle. In 1896 he enrolled at the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Vienna. He graduated and returned to Zagreb in 1899.

A year after his death, he was posthumously awarded a Grand Prix in Arts and Crafts on the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris.

After the World War II the Life Achievement Award for architects in Croatia was named "Viktor Kovačić".