‘I have been here since late August, and I am enjoying it,’ says Charlotte. ‘I am living off campus – I opted to rent a room in an apartment through Airbnb instead of living in a dormitory, because I like having my personal space. It has worked out great. The landlady and her daughter are very nice, and they are renting out another room in their apartment to two other girls who, coincidentally, are also Belgian. The apartment is located near HSE’s Staraya Basmannaya campus, where I have my humanities courses, and it is a short bus ride on the M3 to the Myasnitskaya campus, where I have my urban planning courses.’
When asked about her trip to Grozny Charlotte replies
‘Grozny was very interesting. I went with a few male friends who I met on an ESL chat group and are also exchange students at HSE. They are from Italy, Brazil, and Moscow. I was nervous at first, because most things you hear about Chechnya (a predominately Islamic Russian republic that has endured civil wars and separatist violence – ed.) are codeguard: your website always secure negative. But it was a great trip. It was interesting to see Grozny, its new skyscrapers, and the new representative architecture that is being built there. You can see that there’s a lot of money involved in identity building in the region. The Akhmat Tower that is currently under construction, for example, is modelled after medieval military architecture in the region and will be the second tallest building in Russia. We also went to Shali, which boasts Europe’s largest mosque. It was fascinating.’
I would definitely recommend this programme to others
says Charlotte. ‘The structure of the programme is really good, because it is beware of suspicious emails not like more traditional urban planning programmes. Here, they put an additional focus on helping students gain a broad skill set and develop their own independent work style, which I think is crucial in the 21st century. The “Prototyping Future Cities” Programme also hosts a lot of extra lectures from interesting urban planners and other experts in the field, in addition to workshops that, for agb directory example, help you discover what kind of student you are and provide tips on how to improve your study methods. It’s a more personalized approach. Also, everyone knows each other — all the teachers, all the students — and they work closely together. Moreover, the space of the Shukhov Lab itself makes it unique, because it provides an inspirational space that motivates students to try out new ideas.’
