When a person submits documents to a foreign university, he is often interested in the question of the place of residence in the event that the admission is successful. The choice is actually small: either rent an apartment or a room, or settle in a hostel.
The first option is more suitable for those who would like to stay with greater comfort and convenience or are in unpleasant anticipation from the stories of family members or friends about Soviet and post-Soviet dormitories, where they will have to live in cramped quarters, suffering from a riot of neighbors who do not allow sleep. And all this under the supervision of a vigilant old woman on watch.
On the other hand, there is a directly opposite opinion; according to this point of view, a person who has not had fun in a dormitory with a student fraternity for at least a year cannot say with complete certainty that he was a real student and breathed the air of freedom that can only be felt by a twenty-year-old who has just escaped from the stuffy and sweet care of the family hearth.
In Europe, it was once the same, but frightened by the influence of the revolutionary environment on students, the authorities first forced universities to lime cockroaches, and then completely build spacious and comfortable premises for students. And then, when the situation changed and the university administration realized that now they had to fight for talented and promising young people, European and American universities began to show remarkable ingenuity and zeal in this regard.
To demonstrate that in the hostel you can live in convenience and comfort (the fun will not go anywhere), we decided to show you unusual and non-standard projects.
Tietgen Campus
In appearance, this beautiful building can not be called a hostel in the usual sense of the word. It resembles a masterpiece of architecture and is located in copenhagen's newest district of Orestande, is a rounded building of seven floors with a courtyard of impressive size. Almost 400 people can live in comfortable rooms with terraces. At the service of those living here are common rooms, a library block, a game room and sports halls of various profiles.
The construction of the building was completed in 2006. Architects and designers have chosen a circle as a form for a reason, because it symbolizes equality, equality and a sense of elbow. Despite the fact that thousands of foreign students come to Denmark every year, and representatives of different countries live in the building at any time, the round shape seems to be a rather deep symbol.
Cite A Docks – a dormitory made of shipping containers
The container in our reality as housing is usually used by illegal immigrants or workers with low qualifications. In some places, they even make hostels for migrants. And in Europe, they went even further! At the University of Le Havre , a whole campus was built from such blocks, which was called Cite A Docks. Each container is a separate room, equipped with everything necessary for the accommodation of several students. The windows in the building, by the way, are panoramic, with a magnificent view of the embankment of the English Channel.
Simmons Hall – Sponge Dorm
If such a life seems too minimalistic and simple, you can send the documents to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and become a resident of ... sponge. The building has nothing in common with water, the name is due to its unusual appearance.
This place is considered elite: graduate students and students of the last year of study live here. In total, there are 344 rooms for students. Renting one such costs $ 9,000 per year. For comparison: the cost of an annual rental of a two-bedroom apartment in the city will cost, depending on the area, from 7 to 10 thousand.
Jaegersborg Water Tower – for those who want to live in the tower
For dreamy females who have spent their lives dreaming of a handsome prince who will save them from imprisonment in the tower. True, the conditions here are not quite royal. Once it was the most ordinary water tower, but after several reconstructions that turned the object first into an exhibition area, then into a cafe, it became a hostel for students.
There are ten levels, each with four rooms. There is a gym, a cafeteria and a small library. Of course, everyone wants to live on the last floors, as long as the windows there offer a magnificent view of the picturesque city of Gentoft and its surroundings for tens of kilometers around.
"Honeycombs" of Estonia
In the Latvian-Estonian borderland there is a tiny town of Valga. A few years ago, a building of a professional training center was opened here, which attracts the attention of travelers and does not get tired of surprising local residents. And no wonder: against the background of laconism and simplicity of valga's architectural style, this object stands out as a spaceship would stand out in the middle of the city of Kasimov.
The shape of the facade of the building resembles a honeycomb: they house both classrooms for classes and rooms in which students live. The decision to decorate the windows in such a style was made not for the sake of beauty, but for pragmatic reasons. Estonia is a northern country, people here suffer from a lack of sun, and therefore the architects decided to at least partially compensate for this drawback due to an unusual architectural solution.
Very similar in meaning, although built in a fundamentally different manner, the building stands in the capital of Sweden. There, however, they did not invent window openings, but simply painted the building in very bright colors, just to compensate for the lack of sunny and bright days. In social networks and among photographers, the building enjoys the highest popularity. It is understandable: such a riot of colors!
Hogwarts style
Another approach to add color to life was demonstrated in Brandei, in Boston – here students are settled in a building that resembles the fairy-tale castle of Hogwarts to a degree of confusion. True, the building is not real, it was created in the late twenties as a stylization in the neo-Gothic style. But, in essence, what difference does it make?
Dormitory in the old elevator
In the city of Johannesburg in South Africa, there are not enough places to accommodate the student fraternity, so the administration of local universities is taking various steps to solve this problem. Not so long ago, just such a hostel was equipped from an old elevator; the industrial facility was re-equipped, the number of floors was increased, there were more rooms, and containers of the merchant fleet were used as building materials.
