Ecca collection

Student Housing

How do you house students at a new university? This was the dilemma that faced architects Te Kiefte Architecten when asked to provide temporary student accommodation for a new university that was founded at The Hague in the Netherlands. Eventually the university will build permanent accommodation but for the present it needed studio rooms for 122 students – plus some common facilities – with a planned lifespan of five years.

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Kameha Hotel

You do not need to go in to the Kameha hotel in Bonn, Germany, to know that you have arrived somewhere special. Set in a curve of the Rhine in the suburb of Oberkassel, it looks across the river to some of the main elements of the city, or in the other direction to the Siebengebirge mountains. It is a low-lying building, rising only to a maximum of six floors, which makes the most of its position. Luxurious rooms enjoy magnificent views, and the entire hotel is centred on a gigantic transparent hall, that pays tribute to the great glasshouses of the 19^th Century, but using 21^st Century technology.

Images courtesy of Tomas Riehle, Köln (Germany)

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HiLASE

The futuristic HiLASE Centre in the Czech village of Dolní Brežany, to the west of Prague, has been built to house the DiPOLE, a diode-pumped solid state laser (DPSSL) developed to help scientists expand the use of laser technology, and which its Anglo-Czech owners hope will justify a €33m (£24m) investment from the European Commission.

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