Career
Aleksandars" grandfather, Jovan, came to Belgrade to be an art teacher. He was also related to the famous Serbian writer Stevan Sremac. He wasn"t a very good student in elementary and secondary school, in fact he barely managed to graduate.
As he said in his biography, he preferred boating on the river Sava, than studying.
Before the World War I, he enrolled in Technical Faculty of the University of Belgrade. World War I
In the beginning of the World War, he volunteered in artillery, but was transferred to Skoplje to join the battalion of 1300 corporals and was made a sergeant.
As he was an aeronautical pioneer before the war, he was transferred in to the newly formed Serbian Royal Air Force. He was sent to France for training in the 1915, and thus escaped the retreat of Serbia in the autumn and winter of that year.
His squadron joined the recovered Serbian army on the Salonika Front, where he fought until the end of the war and the liberation of Serbia.
Professional life
He studied architecture in Rome, Prague, Brno and he graduated in Belgrade in 1926. In the early 1930s he became a full professor at the Architectural Faculty in Belgrade. He taught Medieval and Byzantine architecture.
He made a project, along with the Bogdan Nestorović, for the Temple of Saint Sava in that period, and in the 1935 the work on it began.
He was an author of many books, most famously „Medieval Castles on the Danube“ (1964) and „Mischiefs around Kalemegdan“ (1987).