International students' blog – LTH

Hej!

Yesterday I took a walk through the botanical garden and realized that finally, the colours are coming back to Lund! Soon winter will be gone and the spring will take over – I am looking forwards to this! Here are some pictures of the first blooming flowers.

Enjoy taking walks these days!

Sweden is a big country with a lot of amazing travel destinations, especially if you are interested in nature experiences. Here, I will give you 4 destinations that I have visited and really enjoy. 

Koster Islands

I visited Koster Islands last summer and absolutely loved it. The islands, reachable by boat from Strömstad, are completely car-free, and you can rent bikes to get around (or walk). There are several stunning beaches with turquoise water (honestly looks like Greece), cute little picnic spots and cafés, and a huge national park underwater. If you bring your goggles, you can explore the unique archipelago that surrounds the islands.

Tiveden National Park

Another spot I visited last summer is Tiveden National Park, a protected forest area in Västergötland. The park has hiking trails for all levels, as well as several lakes where you can have a little dip in the middle of your hike. Nearby is the old village of Tivedstorp, where you can stay over in red cottages from the 16th century with sheep and horses as your neighbours.

Gotland

Gotland is the largest island in Sweden and is a popular destination among many Swedes, especially in the summer. You can visit the medieval town Visby, swim at one of the many beaches, or discover the unique nature. Many people also visit Gotland to bike around the island, which I haven’t done myself yet but would love to at some point! 

Stockholm

The capital of Sweden also happen to be the city where I grew up, as well as where I currently live – therefore I am probably biased, but I’d still recommend a visit if you are new to Sweden! There are plenty of museums and historical sites to explore, as well as great restaurants and of course an endless list of cafés to discover, thanks to the fika culture of Sweden. In the summer, you can spend the day chilling and diving from the many cliffs around the city, and in the winter you can go ice-skating in the city center.

Would you like to go skiing? Then check out this previous post of mine where I share some insights on ski trips in Sweden. 

If you have visited any other beautiful places in Sweden, please share them in the comments!

Emelie

Picture source: all pictures taken by me

PS. Please make sure to follow the recommendations and restrictions regarding travelling in Sweden during the pandemic.

Lund is a small student town in Sweden where students from all over the world come to study in Lund University and normally before coming to Lund most of us might have these questions in mind:  How will I travel in Lund? How far would my accommodation be from the university?

The answer is: Make a best friend in Lund: Your bike. Yes! Absolutely you got me right 😊

Lund is a small, beautiful student-friendly town and the best option to commute in Lund is by bike. Most of the people living in Lund generally use the bike to go for grocery shopping or for going to their schools, university, and offices and in my opinion, it is the easiest and most convenient way to travel in Lund. Biking around not only saves time but is also the easiest way to exercise, especially in winters as it helps in fighting winter blues.

There are a lot of bike paths in Lund and nearby municipalities and you can go always bike around these paths to explore Lund and nearby areas. You can bike to Lomma beach (watch the sunset/sunrise), Naturskyddsföreningen (Lund Society for Nature Conservation), Malmö (another beautiful city in Sweden), and Dalby (home to the oldest stone church in Scandinavia). There are also some easy excursions from Lund. The countryside to the east of Lund has the most beautiful meadows, forests, farms, and villages filled with nature.   

At last, I would like to emphasize that biking in Lund is the most convenient, economical, and eco-friendly option for students. It is not only time-saving but also helps in keeping fit and energized. In my opinion, it is the best option to explore around Lund with friends. Also, it could be a small initiative by all of us to use bikes and avoid taking public transport to firstly reduce over-crowding during the COVID-19 pandemic and secondly reduce the carbon emissions by choosing a more sustainable and greener option.

Good luck to those who will be starting their studies at Lund University and hope you all will also make your bike- your best buddy in Lund 😊😊

Lagom is the Swedish art of balanced living. Is it possible to have a lagom home as well? When I moved to my room in a dormitory, I thought the plan area was too small. It is common in student housings worldwide to have tiny rooms but is it the same case here in Sweden just to make the student housing more efficient and affordable? Is this only limited to student housing?
The first project that we had in our studio was to design a micro home with a maximum floor area of 25 square meters suitable for a couple. It was an architecture competition from Beebreeders, and our entry received the honorable mentioned prize. That project helped me to learn many new things about how efficient our homes are. Do we need that vast storage room or a huge closet where you can get lost!? It is hard to tell what is the minimum size for a home! It depends on many factors, context, users, needs, etc. National regulations gives a fixed size for this  but it is an interesting topic to rethink spatial organisation and incorporate new approaches in designs for micro home. 

Bokompakt; Sweden Most Compact Student Apartments
In the north-east Lund at Kämnärsvägen, there are many different student housings such as Delphi, Proto, Kämnärsrätten. One of these attracted my attention at first sight, Bokompakt with its green facade. Then I started to read more about it. You can see how close this area is to LTH here.

“The houses offer student housing with villa quality and small-scale density instead of large-scale corridor housing. Several houses are close together, with the front door directly to the outdoors and close to your own garden.” OpenStudio Architects

From 25 to 10 sqm

“If you want to build homes that students can both afford and want to live in, it is necessary to think out of the box and be brave. By optimizing the living space, we in partnership with AF Bostäder managed to reduce the Bokompakt dwellings from today’s requirement of at least 25 sqm down to 10 – thanks to the fact that the Land and Environmental Court approved a deviation from Boverket’s building regulations.” Tengbom Website

Impact on Living Style

As one of the most significant debates of the current time, climate change pushes designers to minimize construction influences. Building in sustainable and eco-friendly materials, using renewable energy sources is one way we all are familiar with. It is easier to control the smaller portions’ impacts, so having a smaller building footprint eases this process. In addition to the less effect on the environment, living small changes our daily habits. Going back to my experience of living in a dormitory with a room of 15sqm, I found that it had a significant influence on my perspective about how much space I do need. I got used to having just a lagom amount of clothes, books, decoration, etc. More importantly, when it is time to move, you will be grateful for living small because your boxes are lightweight!! 

I’m now about a month into writing my thesis for the DRMCCA masters, and it has been an enjoyable experience so far! I am writing together with a friend from the course (you are allowed to write in pairs or individually). We currently live in different cities in Sweden, but divide our time between working ‘together’ online and separately, and have regular Zoom-meetings about our progress.

For the DRMCCA thesis, you can chose whichever topic you want as long as it is connected to something that we have studied during the masters. Our thesis is about the risk perception and protective behaviours among pregnant people in Sweden during the Covid-19 pandemic. We chose to write about Covid-19 as we felt that it would be really interesting to write about something that is currently affecting the entire world, and as it is a new world event, there would still be plenty of research gaps for us to look into. We are also both interested in gender and topics related to people’s personal experiences, and as such we came up with the idea to focus on how pregnant people have perceived risks during the pandemic.

We had initially planned to do an international field study for the thesis, but due to the pandemic we are not able to travel abroad, and thus our case study is Sweden. In the end, this has actually been quite useful since it means that we do not rely on any translators and have a good understanding of the context and culture, since both of us are Swedish and have been in Sweden since the start of the pandemic.

At this stage, we have written drafts for several sections of the thesis, and conducted all of our interviews. I’ll give you another update down the line! 

Do you have any questions about writing a master’s thesis? Drop them in the comment section below!

Emelie

Having the first semester on campus, moving to distance learning was challenging, but we succeeded!
In March 2020, all our classes and studios switched to the online platform of Zoom. It was in the middle of the second semester of my master’s studies, and it has continued to start the fourth, also the last, semester online.
After a year of being a part of the Advanced Architectural Design track, I partook in a studio called Urban Shelter for the third semester.

“The course deals with urban shelter design in a development context with focus on the conditions of the urban poor and on how to bridge the urban divide. High quality urban shelter design is a tool for improved living quality by providing better homes and better cities. Improved shelter is a path to social inclusion, economic development, security, education and health. Therefore, architects involved in the shelter design need to carefully define what quality is.” From the presentation of the course 

The studio had three phases, 1. The preparatory studies 2. The virtual field study in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania 3. Design work; group and individual.
Usually, this course had a study trip to the selected country; however, everything went online in Autumn 2019 for the first time during the pandemic. The chosen city for this semester was Dar es Salaam the capital of Tanzania. For two and half weeks, we had several lecturers from different urban shelter actors such as Ardhi University, national and municipal government, private sectors, and NGOs.

In this format, it was challenging to get to know and understand the local context without traveling. However, searching for information on the web, in books, and articles became more valuable. I can say now I am really looking forward to traveling to Africa and Tanzania with prior insight. After deep learning and investigation, I think the experience is much more exciting than the usual way of field trips. Because we have tried very hard to find the information needed to grasp the city’s life from searching on social media, watching YouTube videos, and talking with locals online.

Meanwhile, nothing was replacing the actual real interviews; we had a few Zoom interviews, but I came up with the idea of conducting an online survey to reach a wider group. In the end, we received 50 responses, which significantly helped to set the design criteria based on a closer look at the reality.

In addition to the virtual trip’s challenges, we had to be creative to do the group work entirely from a distance! For the first phase of design, in a group of 4, we had the neighborhood design of 6hectars. We managed to discuss, define and separate the tasks and combine the results, although it was not interchangeable with working together in an actual room. Thanks to the Urban Shelter’s supportive tutors, the well-organized course’s coordination helped us reach the maximum level we could get with the current situation. In the last phase of design, each team member had chosen an individual building to develop in the architecturally detailed level.


In the final review, Architects from Dar-es-Salaam joined us and gave feedbacks, and a collection of the student proposals will be sent to the collaborating partners in Tanzania.

So I can say it was an unexpected way of learning and design, but the new situation brought new solutions with a creative mind.

Did you know that Sweden has several national days in honour of various baked pastries? I don’t know if any other countries do this, but it is certainly a sign of how much Swedish people love their fika.

‘The Day of the Semla’ falls on the same date as Shrove Tuesday (this year 16th February). On this day, Swedes indulge in a baked sweet known as ‘Semla’ which is a sweet bun with loads of whipped cream and almond paste. In the last few years, bakeries and cafés have also been more and more innovative with how they make the Semla, and these days you can find so many different variations of the traditional bun.

Some other key national days in Sweden is the 4th October, which is the Day of the Kanelbulle, aka the Swedish cinnamon bun, and 25th March – Day of the Waffle. So if you like sweet treats, then Sweden is definitely the country for you!

Do you have any favourite Swedish sweet?

Also, as always, feel free to comment if you have any questions about studying the DRMCCA programme or at Lund university.

Emelie

Picture source