Other Swedish cities?

I am a little bit lazy ), but I start with some pictures from Linköping that someone took.

ITceum


Domkyrkan



Hilton

Linköping, Örebro and Växjö have all in recent years built themselves new universities (all right, Linköping´s was built in the 70´s but anyways). The problem with them, as I find it however, is that they all have done the same mistake: To place the university campus along with their institutions very far away from downtown and outside the town, thereby destroying every chance to add new life to the downtown. In a city like Lund which have had a university for the last 300 years you find the university, naturally, situated in the middle of the city with many institutions in a convenient walking distance from each other. Students are strolling/riding with their bicycles in the streets in the middle of Lund on their way to have a lunch, hurrying to the next lecture or something like that. The students add life to Lund´s stadskärna as they are always in the middle of the city.

In Växjö, the university is situated far from centrum (downtown). It is 3-4 km to the railway station. You have to take a taxi or a bus to get to the university if you are in a hurry from downtown, only few walk. The area has a typical 70´s industrial/housing suburbian feeling with many modernistic buildings surrounded with "parks" (more like big lawns). Most of the students live around the university area and go seldom anywhere outside the campus. The students don´t contribute much to the life of central Växjö which is sad, especially for a small city like Växjö. It could have improved the city´s image a lot.

I'd like to see more photothreads focusing on smaller places like the one where I'm from. A thread about Uppsala for example would be nice. But threads from little towns from all around our region are very welcome

Click to expand...

i thought people were tired of Uppsala by now. I'll try to go to Västerås next weekend or something, I t was a long time ago, even tho its very close

Nightsky: Hehe, allright, if you insist. But remeber, these pics aren´t mine

The main university building of Växjö.



Some buildings surrounding the university:





Btw, if I didn´t mention it last time, I think the university area in Växjö generally has some good pieces of architecture. It is that it feels like the university area is an own city that doesn´t have much in common with the rest of Växjö I think the planners have missed. It should have been built in/near the existing downtown instead of have been placed in the outskirts of Växjö. This is a map which explains what I mean.



A map over the area:


And the last picture: In the early 20th century Teleborg slott was built by a count as a gift to his bride. This castle lies not far away from the university (in fact the whole campus and its buildings have been built on land the castle had). Växjö municipality bought the castle in the 1960´s and it is nowadays a popular restaurant.

Around or slightly more than 10000 students is my guess. Many of them don´t live in Växjö though, as it also include distance courses and courses in other places that sort under Växjö so you´re only technically a student in Växjö and so on. But 8000-10000 students is good for a city like Växjö, which has 55000 inhabitants.

Solbyair! Nice thoughts about Växjö. I 100% agree with you. The city has missed an opportunity to make the citylife more vivid. The university was put there in the 60s and we have to accept that fact due to the campus ideal they had in those days. But the last 10 years of massive development there could have meant a change for the area into a more urban feel. Unfortunately that didn´t happen. It still is a pretty dull institutional area. I hope that my generation of architects have other visions for places like Växjö University.