apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Those are amazing, but they are not college living! Give me my 10x12 cinder block experience any day!

ok. the architect and former college student in me says "woohoo. how awesome would it have been to be in these spaces vs. my cinder block dorm room" (which btw is still bigger than my current bedroom that i share with two other people)

...the parent/having-to-save-for-my daughter's-future-college-education in me says "ya know, cinder blocks weren't that bad..."

Meh! Just looks like big windows and Ikea furniture to me. I'll take off-campus housing anyday!

Instead of spending massive amounts of money on palatial dormitories, maybe some of those colleges who are "scrambling to keep enrollment up" might want to look at providing a quality education at an affordable price. I know a lot of kids who'd be eager to sleep in 10x12 cinderblock rooms if they could find that.

Haha Reminds me of the new Dorm I got to Live in while going to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. I was one of the lucky few to be the first ones living at 162 North State Street with the Corner room and only one roomate!
I think we had something like 600 SF
http://www.artic.edu/webspaces/operations/Dorms/X-12.gif

If your choosing a collage based on what the dorms look like you are not going to collage for the right reasons.

Hahahaha! Yeah, I lived in a cinder block room for a few years and then a trailer my senior year. It was great.

Yeah, I would much rather see the money spent on labs, classrooms, professors.

side note: Canada has a National School of Humor?!? awesome!

i'm so jealous but I'm use to living in my hole in the wall dorm in NYC, I can look back and say if I could live like that for months at a time then anything else will feel like a palace! hehe

As a professor, I have to agree with the negative reactions. I wish more students were in college to learn.

As a recent DePaul grad I know several people who lived in 1237 West and just hated it. Might have been the price, might have been the lack of amenities. But either way, why would parents pay $990 a month for their kid to live in a dorm??? DePaul doesn't have enough housing for all their students. I would think building affordable units over trendy ones would be the top priority.

I love these! I wish I would have had the option to live in a dorm like this at my college. I would have gladly paid extra. Instead I lived in one that my dad nicknamed "the dungeon."

My boyfriend lived in that dorm at Swarthmore! It really is that gorgeous. It still feels "dorm-y," but in a good way.

Went to OSU and lived in Smith Hall. It was a cinder block dorm that resembled the Robert Taylor Homes. Didn't give two Sh*ts though since I was always at class, the library, or out. I think this is a waste of resources the school should be spending elsewhere.

Renderings and images from developers' websites always portray a positive image of a building. I've lived in the IIT dorms and had close friends in the apartments at DePaul, both of which suffer from the use of cheap materials and labor during construction. All three American universities presented all have affordable housing (compared to local renter's rates)available to students that are indeed cinder block dorms with community bathrooms and the like.

Palatial dorms have existed for quite sometime. Some of the nicest dorms I've seen are from the early 1800s and include fireplaces and wood paneled rooms.

Lived in a basic dorm room. Communal bathrooms and showers. At the time it was a blast. Dorms are really bad when you reflect back on them.

My college's 19th Century dorms were a big selling point for me. Tails shouldn't wag dogs, of course, but aren't we all about creating pleasant homes?

I think living in a crappy res hall is part of the college experience. Plus, I was a resident advisor for freshmen - and the damage they do their rooms and furnishing makes it much more sensible to give them the cinder block ones.

I'm going back to school!

Man, the 1237 West at De Paul has all that great Eames furniture (yes, they are all furnished by Herman Miller). Pretty attractive incentive to go back to college....!

Sidenote: I would HOPE the Danish schools would have all their clean lines, Danish furniture and modern taste in practice... ;-)

i'm a current depaul student, and as nice as 1237 looks, it is not technically campus housing. it is an affiliated property that only students are allowed to live in. i lived in a campus apartment last year that was built before 1900 with about 500 layers of paint and broken radiators to prove it, it was also lacking the amazing furniture. so rest assured many students are there for the great education and dealing with the typical dumpy campus housing.

I went to Bryn Mawr, where the dorms have been gorgeous for, well, ever. Every room I lived in had a windowseat, original woodwork, and a (non-working) fireplace.

These are cool; mine were cooler.

As much as I appreciate the aesthetic value of these "dorm rooms", as a college student, I'd much rather see schools attract top students with quality, AFFORDABLE education rather than exorbitant spendings on student housing and athletic facilities. Let's have fewer lessons on self-entitlement and more on actual knowledge that will improve the world, please. But I suppose someone's gotta cater to the parents who are willing to shell out nearly $1000 each month so their kid can live in a palatial "dorm room"; God forbid that the kids have to share a room and learn to actually co-exist with another human being...

Don't worry, my first year was in a cinderblock room (11x13 I believe) and am now only in a teeny apartment that, being built by the school, isn't too hot.

At least a few of those options were more along the lines of communal living. That seems a bit less ridiculous.

And Eames furniture in a dorm!!! What were they thinking?!