page_title: Church of Saint Sava
section_title: Resuming of work
hierarchical_section_title: Church of Saint Sava / History / Construction / Resuming of work
caption_attribution_description: English: Composite section plan Church of Saint Sava Belgrade
context_page_description: The Church of Saint Sava is a Serbian Orthodox church which sits on the Vračar plateau in Belgrade, Serbia. It was planned as the bishopric seat and main cathedral of the Serbian Orthodox Church. The church is dedicated to Saint Sava, the founder of the Serbian Orthodox Church and an important figure in medieval Serbia. It is built on the presumed location of St. Sava's grave. His coffin had been moved from Mileševa Monastery to Belgrade. It was placed on a pyre and burnt in 1595 by Ottoman Grand Vizier Sinan Pasha. Bogdan Nestorović and Aleksandar Deroko were finally chosen to be the architects in 1932 after a second revised competition in 1926/27. This sudden decision instigated an important debate in interwar Yugoslavia which centred around the temple's size, design and symbolic national function. This was accompanied by a sizeable increase in the base area of the ambitiously conceived project. The new design departed from the competition guidelines issued in 1926, and was to replicate the dimensions and architecture of Hagia Sophia.
  The first stone was laid in 1935. When Yugoslavia was under occupation in 1941, the construction was approximately ten metres high.
context_section_description: Architect Branko Pešić was selected as the new architect of the church. He revised the original plans in order to make better use of new materials and building techniques. Construction of the building began again on 12 August 1985. The original design project proposed a structure composed of masonry and partly reinforced concrete. The state of the existing foundations was learned after detailed investigative work. The four central bell towers were founded on 532 "Simplex" piles, 6 m in depth. The massive perimeter walls are laid on strip foundation 4 m in depth. The quality of the various materials used, i.e. brick, concrete, reinforcement, marble, etc. had been established through investigative work. Detailed survey of the existing structure, the as-built outlines were determined, and served as a starting point for further design and construction work.
  From the resumption of construction, the building was re-planned to use a very high level of assembling methods of all parts of the static system, although the complex geometrical shapes of the building made it necessary to use some new and unique methods. As the building was build from pre-assembled concrete slabs, a technological model had to be implemented to provide parallel works, secure quality and build economically. With innovation in the building procedure, the speed of "assembling" the building could be greatly enhanced. Construction was resumed on the level of the original design which used a combination of brick and concrete was cancelled. These lower levels were preserved with the foundation structure, which had to be repaired. The four-wing section had to be separated from the central part by way of expansion joints. Tying up of the foundations, the existing part and the new structure of forthcoming stages were achieved with reinforced concrete columns and tie-beams. Expansion joints in the wing sections were carried out along the line of intersection between the semi-domes and the main arches, and vertically down the bell towers up to the foundations.
  The continued construction was designed as a fully prefabricated reinforced concrete element structure. From the geometrically complicated form in view of its structural points, the single elements had to be broken down into precast components outlined with straight lines to the greatest possible extent. Walls had been designed as hollow boxes, which, when assembled, give the building its massive appearance.
  All arched shapes of the galleries and vaults were transformed into assemblies of elements curved into two dimensions, which, having been erected, formed three-dimensional shapes. The semi-domes and the dome have been linearized by designing a system of arched trusses and two layers of curved decking. The precast parts were bound into a whole by in-situ cast parts of the structure which provided the required safety and longevity of the building.
  The bell towers were initially started as a combination of brick and concrete columns and were continued as concrete box-structures for providing the greatest possible resistance of the towers and the least possible weight. This part of the building was completed by applying the sliding shuttering method (slip-form), with the advantages of prefabrication.
  The central part of the building includes four main arches between the bell towers and the central dome with the pendentive underneath and the dome on top. Each arch spans 24 m, which is one of the widest vault spans achieved, as most of the European great domes rest on 8 or 16 pillars. Only Hagia Sophia's dome rests on only four pillars with a span between the arches reaching 31 m. It is still the widest span between the arches of any historical sacral building and still the biggest dome which was erected on only four pillars.
  It was found that the type of foundation chosen in the initial design lacked adequate strength to carry the loads imposed from the whole building. With the new materials and design methods, weight was reduced by 30-40 %. Before the lifting of the main dome the "Simplex" piles below the main
caption: Composite section plan. The building was reworked by Pešić
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