The professional body of architects for the region had called tenders to design the two monuments and submissions were on display in Pécs?s Csontváry Museum for a month before the winners were announced on September 11.
A work entitled ?Breuer in Pécs / There and Back? by István Csákány and a design by Zoltán Makra and Dóra Palatinus were the winners.
Breuer left Pécs and then the country when he was still a boy. He spent many years at the Bauhaus school in Germany, then went to America. Pécs cannot boast of a single building designed by Breuer, and it is precisely this void that Csákány?s monument ? a trailer, without the tractor, on a pedestal ? dubbed ?Marcel Breuer Memorial Room? seeks to fill.
The visual language of the plan is unusual compared to the common practice in Hungary, But the materials of the monument are closer to home. Csákány has chosen to use light-transmitting concrete invented by the Hungarian Áron Losonczi to illuminate the monument at night.
The other winner also uses unconventional language. The title of the piece ? ?37 square metres? ? is a nod to the flats in the pre-fab housing projects around the site of the monument. The monument consists of a welded aluminum frame covered by coloured sheets of glass. It lies tilted to the side and is illuminated by rows of LEDs.
Hopefully, the monuments can be seen in their respective places by the spring of 2011.
Author: Eszter Götz
