BIVAK studio Designs Marcel Breuer Memorial Bench by BIVAK studio

Marcel Breuer (1902, Pécs – 1981, New York), the world-renowned architect and furniture designer, and former Harvard University professor, emigrated from Europe to the United States, where he became a defining figure of American modernism. In his hometown of Pécs, Hungary, a public memorial bench designed by BIVAK Studio has been unveiled in his honor.

Realized through extensive professional and community collaboration, as well as crowdfunding, the bench aims to foster a cultural dialogue between Pécs and New York, in the spirit of Breuer’s legacy. The design was selected through an open competition organized in 2023 by the South Transdanubian Chamber of Architects, originally intended for a public memorial column. BIVAK Studio architects Tamás Máté and Áron Vass-Eysen instead proposed a street furniture that embodies Breuer’s design philosophy in both form and function. Inaugurated in 2025, the bench transcends the notion of a conventional monument, serving as an actively used public element seamlessly integrated into Pécs’s urban fabric, along the Marcel Breuer Promenade, one of the city’s key cultural axes developed as part of the European Capital of Culture Pécs 2010 program.