Two large companies are investing 40 million euros in the BIGZ building in Belgrade

The company Marera Real Estate Partners announced today that it will invest 40 million euros in the renovation of the BIGZ building in Belgrade together with its partner “Aleksandar gradnja”.
“In the first partnership project, Marera bought the BIGZ building, which it will renovate according to the tried and tested concept by which its company, Marera Properties, positioned itself as a leader in the reconstruction of famous buildings in Belgrade,” the statement said.
The company MPP BIGZ, in which Marera and “Aleksandar gradnja” have a 50 percent share each, is the new owner of BIGZ.
Reconstruction of the building, once the largest printing house in the Balkans, will take 18 months in cooperation with the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments of the City of Belgrade to preserve the authentic appearance of Dragisa Brasovan’s project.
“This monumental building has over 40,000 square meters, of which just over half of the usable space is due to impressively designed corridors and stairwells,” said the company’s director Milana Sreckov.
She added that the office segment on the domestic real estate market is far from saturated and that there is room for new investments.
As a future modern business center, BIGZ will, as stated, offer companies interested in leasing a combination of classic offices and “open space concept” and the opportunity for the organization of space and interior design to be fully adapted to their needs.
Marera Properties is engaged in investing in real estate that it develops and rents after the acquisition, and has 190,000 square meters at its disposal.
The BIGZ building is one of the most famous architectural achievements of Yugoslav modernism. It was built as a building of the State Printing House between 1934 and 1941, according to the project of the architect Dragisa Brasovan, with a floor plan in the shape of the Cyrillic letter “P” and a shape similar to a printing machine from that time.
At that time, the fourth largest printing house in Europe, and the largest facility in Yugoslavia, was one of the largest in the Balkans, with a height of 64 meters and 3.5 hectares of usable area. For the first time, the technique of laying the foundation on a reinforced concrete slab was applied during its construction.
The building was abandoned in the 1990s and left to neglect, but in recent years it has been used by several companies and some artists, designers, architects, musicians, Danas reports.