Tallest student accommodation (highest occupied floor)

A few lucky students at Roosevelt University in Chicago, Illinois, USA, enjoy what is quite possibly the best view of any university accommodation in the world. The 143-m-high (469-ft) Wabash skyscraper contains student residences as high as 129.8 m (426 ft). And because city regulations restrict construction of nearby towers, all 17 floors of student housing are guaranteed to possess unobstructed views of Lake Michigan forever. There are 295 private rooms, 320 beds in double occupancy rooms and 18 rooms for resident assistants. The rest of this 32 “vertical campus” contains teaching and research facilities for science and business studies, as well as a recreation centre and 300-seat dining room. Coloured blue-green, the building was designed by VOA architects, finished in 2012, and cost US$110 million. The Wabash building has been designed to look particularly attractive from the nearby CTA elevated railway line. It was inspired by a diverse range of sources, including Constantin Brancusi's Endless Column sculptures and Sol Lewitt’s Wall Drawing series, as well as by Ivan Leonidov’s entry for the Commissariat of Heavy Industry architectural competition in Moscow (1961) and by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s Inland Steel Building in Chicago (1957). Standing at 144.2 m (473 ft), the Marymount University Dormitory is taller but the upper floors are residential condominiums and not student housing.