The integration of regional architecture into contemporary thinking is one of the most important issues in contemporary Hungarian architecture. In addition to formal issues, this problem primarily requires an understanding of the structure and functioning of settlements and the unraveling of the traditions embedded in them, which are increasingly under threat.

In the past two years, two school buildings have been built in Csorná, one of the defining market towns of the Kisalföld region, largely following the old settlement structure. The school presented here takes the ideas raised by the smaller building, designed by 3h office, even further, creating a unique example of contemporary Hungarian architecture.

The design and operation of the building can also be interpreted as a study of the city and the forms of activities possible within it. The tight mass is cut out of the plot by routes and spaces that are all models of public spaces that previously existed here and are known in a small town. The remaining passage through the narrow plot to the parallel street (towards the other school building) gained new meaning by building the school opposite the beautifully proportioned and raw firewall of the neighboring building. As a result, not only did the route and its space gain a definite shape and the intermediate space – one of the greatest secrets and values of small towns – became much denser, but the semi-private spaces connected to it, opening up in the school (gallery, one of the inner courtyards) also created a new urban environment among the previous back gardens.

The internal functions are also organized around the urban external and transitional spaces in the building, which – as its generous internal spaces are connected to the external but closed courtyards – thus creates the functional order of the traditional small town-village porta and the simple forms associated with it without any nostalgia. The very first atrium organizes the spaces for teachers and administration into a group, the central, semi-open courtyard is for the children, and the rearmost one opens towards the city and the public areas, creating a transitional space between the internal spaces accessible to the public and the passageway. The corridors, stairs and internal open spaces between the closed internal space groups provide a condensed and thus very intense model of the city's views, insights and forms of movement – the children with varying degrees of disability who spend most of their time here thus receive their own 'school' of the city, a manual for the spaces that they would otherwise probably only be able to use in an uncertain and limited way.

The use of materials, the symbolic distinctions of colors – the individual traffic functions, the specific characters belonging to the functional groups of the courtyards – all reinforce this order of thought, while at the same time reinforcing the building’s open, light character, primarily emerging from the city’s spaces, despite its closed mass. The inner walls of the windows opening onto the brick surfaces are painted, and the non-reversible cladding also emphasizes the delimiting properties of the surfaces and the new spaces opening up behind them, the connection points of the spaces, rather than the closed, squat mass-likeness.