CNN Style explains why the celebrated Phase 1 design of the Central European University's deliberately modernist Budapest campus may potentially not be able to save the school's existence in the city.

Designed by Irish firm O'Donnell + Toumey, the part-new part-refurbished university building, with its nod to transparency and context, is currently one of four shortlistees for the 2018 RIBA International Prize, however tensions have been steadily growing between the administration of populist Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán and the institute's founder, Hungarian American billionaire George Soros, a liberal. 

While the school moved to plan a satellite campus in Vienna, the future progress of the Budapest campus development remains in limbo — a scenario of uncertainty for O'Donnell + Toumey. "I don't think you can hold architecture to account in matters of social change," John Tuomey told CNN, "architecture doesn't directly influence society in that way."