David Russell Apartments

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Opened in September 2004, David Russell Apartments is a large residential complex owned by the University of St Andrews which replaced, and was built on the site of, the former residence David Russell Hall.

[edit] Architecture and Living Environment

Residents share mixed feelings about this particular Hall of Residence, but the following details are factual. This summary is by no means complete, but the positive aspects are unclear; this may be due to their clandestine nature, or to other factors.

The apartments are situated around twenty minutes' walk from the centre of St Andrews, in East Fife, Scotland.

The University rents rooms to conference guests during the golfing season, and to students outwith that season (at 75% of the in-season price). The design (and organisation) of the Apartments has a number of key features:

  • Paper-thin walls within buildings: this has the unfortunate consequence that students are commonly kept awake at night listening to their neighbours' various bodily functions. A standard problem with student halls of residence, one might have thought, and one which could have been easily rectified given the recent dates of construction. Sound insulation isn't the most expensive of additions; but then, the University Accommodation service is not famous for its generosity.
  • Showers: even though the rooms are en-suite, the showers produce an ineffectual cone of water, the temperature of which fluctuates from scalding through to slightly chilly. These fluctuations are random, uncontrollable, and generally uncomfortable.
  • Heating: comes on and off at odd hours. If the student wakes up too late, the room will not be hot until the evening. This is not a problem in the summer. It makes life uncomfortable in the winter.
  • Structure: the buildings are divided into roughly twelve flats each, and the flats are composed of a set of five rooms with en-suite bathrooms, together with a (functional) kitchen and (vile) living-room. Consequently, student interaction is minimised; this is a serious problem for new students attempting to make new friends, but seems to keep the golf tourists happy. The living-rooms are bland, inhospitable, and soul-destroying.
  • Tone: the Apartments (absent some very determined efforts on the parts of students to redecorate) manage to convey the impression that a Young Offender's Institute has been crossed with an old peoples' home before being sterilised and lit entirely with fluorescent lighting. This makes it less of a pleasant living environment than either.
  • Rooms: notable features include a desk which is frustratingly narrow, a double bed with a mattress which is so thin as to preclude any activity other than sleep (and that only with some luck), a wardrobe with no doors (why?), and an absence of bookshelves - curious, one might think, given that the rooms are supposed to be student accommodation.
  • And for 2005-6: a building site immediately beside the Apartments, which used to prevent sleep between the hours of 7am and 12 noon all days of the week excluding Sunday. However construction has now been completed and therefore the aforementioned noise has now stopped.


Aside from this, the Apartments do have some positive features, to wit:

  • En-suite bathrooms; these enable students to wash without being exposed to other students.
  • Kitchens: these have ovens which work (and dishwashers).
  • Trendy wooden planking in humorous locations.

and, lastly

  • Wildlife - mostly contained within the drainage pools which some landscape gardening fanatics consider to be elegant lakes.

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../d/a/v/David_Russell_Apartments_b085.html"