One of the most refined buildings in Litomyšl designed after November 1989 is that of the T. G. Masaryk Primary School (3rd Primary School). It was designed by Brno architects Aleš Burian and Gustav Křivinka, and built between 1995 and 1998. Their tasteful Neo-functional design won the architecture design competition for the school in 1994.
The designers formally pursued the – for them familiar – tradition of Brno interwar Functionalism. However, they concentrated on its restrained, less tense Avant-garde position and designed a well-organized building with a pure architectural form, based on simple geometric shapes. The individual buildings are laid out in a U-shape opening up towards a slope and its sides defining the space of the inner courtyard with artistically laid out paving and an open-air auditorium set into the terrain slope. The whole complex is complemented with a self contained gymnasium which serves as the municipal sports hall after school hours (04-1145b).
The purist facade of the school is broken up by exceptionally large, and on each side various-sized, windows allowing the maximum of light to enter and, at the same, offering panoramic views over the historical centre. Thanks to this, the building interacts with its immediate (and more remote) neighbourhood, which was one of the designers' main aims.
As the designers themselves say, this “transparency” confirms the democratic character of the school. This character is clear to see in the layout of the pupils' cloakrooms which are not located centrally, but in the form of separate cubicles outside each classroom on the corridors.
The building encompasses fifteen classrooms, an assembly hall and clubrooms for after-school activities. In 1999, it gained an honourable mention at the Grand Prix of the Architects' Guild in the New-building category.
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