The creators of the fourteenth unique artistic bench, named “Memory”, are Maja Žalik, Tjaša Pauko, Lucija Cvejan, and Sara Milič, students in the Master’s programme in Architecture at the Faculty of Civil Engineering, Transportation Engineering, and Architecture at the University of Maribor, under the mentorship of Assoc. Professor Nande Korpnik, with a B.Sc. in Architecture. The bench is located in the courtyard of the Karantena building at Pobreška cesta 20 in Maribor. It is made from recycled metal pipes and smooth concrete. The official unveiling took place on 21 May 2019.
The authors won an internal competition in 2019 as part of a seminar led by Assoc. Professor Nande Korpnik. They then designed the unique bench as part of the project 2ND Chance – waking up the “sleeping giants”, which was a component of the European URBACT III programme.
The story of the Bench
The bench symbolizes the heavy historical significance of the site, which was once the Austrian prison (1889) and later the Correctional Institution in Maribor, functioning until 1963. It represents the decay of the prison buildings and their rebirth with new, more human-friendly purposes. The bench’s base is made of metal pipes of varying diameters, symbolizing the difficult past of the adjacent building, while the smooth, light concrete seating surface represents its future and the revitalization of the area.
