Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design

Rubik’s Cube

Project overview

Starting out as a geometric model, it evolved into one of the most widely known spatial puzzle games of all times. Initially a student of the University, Ernő Rubik also taught at MOME’s predecessor, the College of Applied Arts, in the 1970s.

During his tenure here, he experimented with the creation of a demonstration aid composed of cubes, which could be moved along all three axes. In the 2000s, the then rector of MOME Gábor Kopek proposed to install a work of art on campus to draw attention to Rubik’s work. The concept developed by photographer and media artist Gábor Kopek and his co-creator, graphic artist and designer László Zsótér, was that of a concrete cube, which kept the form but departed from the scale of the Rubik’s Cube.

Made of a material called LiTraCon, it has a shape that is both reminiscent of Rubik’s invention and the tradition of the Bauhaus school. The only inscriptions read ‘RUBIK’, ‘MOME’, ’1974’, and ‘2014’, the latter two being the year when the cube was invented and its 40th anniversary, when the memorial was inaugurated.