For several years already, the Moscow metropolitan area has been realizing the state-sponsored program of school construction – according to the region’s authorities, the nation’s biggest project of such kind. Annually, regional publications report about tens of school buildings being put into operation, which is, of course, good news because we see the late shift in schools gradually becoming history. Domodedovo became no exception – the town’s oldest educational institution, Lyceum #3, named after the Hero of the Soviet Union Yuri Maksimov, got a new building last year, thanks to which its students will no longer have to study in the late shift. At the same time, however, the Domodedovo school is not “just another school” in the state-sponsored program. It has been built not by some obscure architectural office, but by a project developed by an architectural company with a name: the task of designing a relatively small school for 275 students, at the invitation of the general contractor, Academproject, was commissioned to the ASADOV_ architects (the architectural company and the contractor has long since been engaged in partnership and friendly relationship). When they already got down to work, the architects found out that it was about designing a school building that could be duplicated in other towns of Moscow metropolitan area – essentially, they were required to design a “model” school. According to the company leader, Andrey Asadov, the client at the same time posed a task of designing all of the school spaces as efficiently as possible, i.e. make their area minimal – “not a single extra square meter”. It was a government contract, and this means that for the construction of the school, including the equipment, utility lines, and the landscaping, a fixed sum is allotted from the budget – 1.2 million per student, which is sometimes augmented by the donations for the municipal budget (totally, the new school building cost 524.6 million rubles, 364.6 million rubles coming from the regional budget). Not too much, by any standards.