Our office, MINUSPLUS, won the architectural design competition for the largest creative industry innovation project of recent years, the MOME Campus. The design work was based on several years of research, which not only includes the current transformation of higher education institutions and the functional analysis of contemporary architectural examples, but also brings together related scientific fields (environmental psychology, educational organization and management) in an interdisciplinary manner. The aim of the research is to show Hungarian higher education institutions the path of transformation and to offer architectural solutions that facilitate this. We published these results at two conferences in 2015. Our work was confirmed by the fact that the presentations also influenced the development of the strategy (Integrated Institution Development Program) preparing the development of the MOME Campus, and were referred to in it several times. The design competition announced at the end of last year provided an unexpected opportunity to verify the knowledge gained in research in practice and to put it into architectural form.

When planning the development of the MOME campus, our primary goal was to create participatory, permeable, community- and collaborative learning environments instead of the current authoritarian structures of education. The spaces we designed are not closed and finished, but rather accommodate and serve the user. Our campus concept is to create a network that weaves through the entire university, providing passage between external and internal spaces, between teacher and student, between places of community and solitude. The pure function of each space dissolves, functional and physical boundaries blur, and the rooms are constantly reinterpreted according to the needs placed on them. The seminar room, the staircase or even the garden can also be a creative, exhibition or circulation space.