The first significant achievements – Two villas for the Auer family

At the very beginning of his architectural career, Viktor Kovačić was first met by his patron architect Kunno Weidmann. In the spring of 1900, he accepted him as an associate in his studio. It was at the time of his collaboration with Weidmann that Kovačić’s first significant work was created in Zagreb, Milan Eisner’s house at King Tomislav Square 11. It is a typical, somewhat restrained Zagreb building from the beginning of the 20th century. Only a few details on that two-story multi-apartment building, such as the corner elevation with a semicircular window finish, foreshadow Kovačić’s future work. In a similar spirit, Kovačić completed several more buildings by 1905.

Between 1902 and 1905, he collaborated with several well-known Zagreb construction enterprises – the brothers Carnelutti and Pilar & Mally & Bauda. At that time, his very creative collaboration with the architect Josip Marković came to the fore. In 1902, Kovačić designed with him the residential building of Dr. Oskar Kornitzer at 22 Gundulićeva Street for the architectural studio of Gjura Carnelutti, and in 1903 the remodeling of the ground floor and extension of Dr. Eugen Winkler’s residential house at 14 Preradovićeva Street.

A harmonious one-story house with a basement was built on the slope between Rokova Pavilion and Nazorova Street for Ferdinand and Amalija Auer. Kovačić worked on the executive plans for the villa during September and October 1903, and it was built in 1904. With this villa, Kovačić made the first significant step by which he began to move away from the tradition of Zagreb’s historicism, leaning towards the new European currents that came to him from Vienna. The villa was designed in a completely new spirit. The change is most obvious in the floor plan, that is, in the internal organization of the space, which is extremely rational and functional.

_{Villa of Robert Auera, Rokova Street 9}

1st Phase, painting studio, 1904

2nd Phase, family villa, 1905 – 1906

Just one year later, after the villa of Ferdinand and Amalija Auer was built in the garden of this villa, on today’s Rokova Street 9 Viktor Kovačić designed a garden pavilion for a painting studio for their son Robert Auer, which he adapted into a family villa shortly after his marriage (the so-called second villa Auer).

Painting studio of Robert Auer, 1904

Villa Auer in Rokova Street, at the very entrance to the former Rokova cemetery, is one of Kovačić’s most distinctive early works. It was originally built as a studio for painter Robert Auer in the garden of his parents’ nearby villa at Nazorova Street 10. The studio was built during the summer of 1904. It had a very unusual floor plan of an elongated octagon. The studio had two floors. In the lower one there was a cellar, while on the ground floor there was a spacious studio, which was entered from the south side through the vestibule. Between the octagonal studio and the vestibule, there was an anteroom with a triangular floor plan, divided into several smaller units with sanitary facilities and a wardrobe.

Since very soon Robert Auer needed his own family house due to his marriage, Kovačić created a project for the extension of the studio in 1905. To the octagon of the studio, placed asymmetrically in relation to the building direction of Rokova Street, Kovačić adds a residential part symmetrical with the street line. He used the basement part of the former studio for the commercial part of the villa, and the bedrooms were located on the upper floor next to the preserved studio.

Kovačić’s solution for the west facade of the extension is particularly interesting, where he designed an unusually large semi-oval bay window at the northwest corner, along the entire height of the upper floor. From Rokova Street, the villa looks very simple, like a modest one-story house with an accented mansard roof, completely merged with the environment. The facades of the villa are designed extremely restrained, without superfluous decorative details. The only decoration on the street facade is a small replica of an ancient relief.