This year's winner of the Carbuncle Cup for the country's worst building plumbed new depths of awfulness in standards of student housing – providing cramped cells that look directly on to a brick wall. Adding insult to injury, the planners refused permission for this abysmal scheme, only to have their decision overturned by a planning inspector, setting a precedent that students should be thought of as a subspecies that have no need for natural daylight or decent space standards.

The tragic thing is that UCL's New Hall residence is far from unique, with speculative stacks of mean-minded hutches erected up and down the country, the product of developers and investors looking to exploit desperate students and lax planning legislation.

But it hasn't always been this way – and it needn't continue to be so. Below are 10 examples of student accommodation buildings that go beyond the housing-by-numbers approach. From India to Denmark, Italy to America, they show how compact spaces for communal living can be thoughtfully planned and well built, to make decent places with a real sense of social vitality. From clustered hives to radial cities, bungalow grids to streets in the sky, they reveal a range of approaches that show alternatives to the current plague of grim pile 'em high slabs.

Slithering brick snake … Alvar Aalto's Baker House. Photograph: MIT

Baker House, MIT, by Alvar Aalto

MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, 1946

A slithering snake of a building, winding its way along the banks of the Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Baker House is the work of Finnish architect Alvar Aalto. He devised the serpentine form to provide every student with a view out over the river, while also giving a sense of individuality to each room – there are 22 different-shaped bedrooms per floor. Gloomy north-facing rooms are also avoided by positioning the staircases and circulation in the bends along the northern facade, with double-height lounge and dining areas nestled into the crooks at the base of the building. Built in rough textured red brickwork, it stands like some geological formation, a robust masonry cliff that has weathered well over the last 60 years – and continues to be one of the most sought-after places to live on campus.

Hilltop cluster … Giancarlo de Carlo in Urbino. Photograph: FU Urbino

Free University of Urbino, Italy, by Giancarlo de Carlo

Urbino, Italy, 1962–5

Clustered on the crest of a low hill, about a kilometre outside the old city walls, the halls of residence of Urbino's Free University were designed by Italian architect Giancarlo de Carlo, a member of the radical Team 10 group. The groups of flats, which accommodate 1,500 students, are splayed in a fan shape to maximise views and adjust with the tumbling contours of the landscape, allowing each room to enjoy an outdoor terrace on the roof of its lower neighbour. The form reinterprets the medieval jumble of the old hill-town, expressed in exposed concrete and brick, with each row of houses connected by space-age tubular walkways – allowing students to scurry between bedrooms unseen.

Streets in the sky … Josep Luís Sert's Peabody Terrace. Photograph: Flickr/Iqbal Aalam

Peabody Terrace, Harvard, by Josep Luís Sert

Harvard, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, 1963–4

Variously described as "monstrous," "cold," "uninviting," "overwhelming" and "hostile" by local residents when it opened, Harvard's Peabody Terrace development has been equally lauded by architects and its student residents ever since. Designed specifically for married graduate students by Catalan architect Josep Luís Sert, who was dean of Harvard's architecture school at the time, the three 22-story towers are ingeniously planned, using a few standardised apartment types cleverly arranged in section to create double-height terraces. Set back from the street and surrounded by three, five and seven-storey buildings to allow a gradual transition of scale, the towers are linked by raised streets to surrounding public spaces. Leland Cott, a Harvard professor of urban design, describes the complex as "a model of design efficiency, economy, and attention to scale."

Rocky outcrop … Denys Lasdun's UEA ziggurats. Photograph: Flickr/.Martin

Norfolk Terrace, UEA, by Denys Lasdun

University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK, 1962–8

Beset by delays, leaks and budget overruns, like all the best modernist masterpieces, the concrete ziggurats of the University of East Anglia's student halls rise out of the rolling green landscape like a series of rocky outcrops. Designed by Denys Lasdun as a complex of "architectural hills and valleys", they nestle in the landscape and are accessed from a raised street, across from a line of teaching blocks. They are arranged as a "landlocked harbour" of platforms and interlocking terraces – tempting students to scamper between levels, like a giant game of snakes and ladders. Each little mountain was conceived as a self-contained "habitat" of 12 study bedrooms and a kitchen-cum-breakfast room, facing out towards the river, with bathrooms and service rooms behind, reached off a stair. Housing the students in independent flats, away from a collegiate system, was a radical departure, allowing students greater freedom within a "family unit" of their peers.

Human advent calendar … Powell & Moya's Cripps Building. Photograph: St John's College, Cambridge

Cripps Building, Cambridge, by Powell & Moya

St John's College, Cambridge, UK, 1967

Described by Nikolaus Pevsner as "a masterpiece by one of the best architectural partnerships in the country", the Cripps Building, by Powell & Moya, is a precedent that architects refer to again and again for its cleverly judged sequence of public and private spaces. Sited dramatically on the edge of the river, the buildings continue the pattern of college courtyards, with bold Portland stone facades framing big picture windows, creating animated grids of college life so you can see what your neighbours are up to – particularly popular among exhibitionists. The ground floors are left largely open, providing a covered route in the tradition of the old arcaded college courts and forming expansive undercrofts that play host to impromptu outdoor dinners, while big roof terraces link the blocks at a higher level.

Unweildy spaceship … James Stirling's Florey Building. Photograph: Queen's College, Oxford

Florey Building, Oxford, by James Stirling

Queen's college, Oxford, UK, 1966–71

When he commissioned the architect James Stirling, the provost of Queen's College, Lord Florey, said said he wanted a building that was not "boxy and dull" but one that would be "admired by architects." He certainly got what he wanted, even if he didn't live to see it completed. The Florey building is hailed in the architectural canon, but was reviled by its clients – to such an extent that it prompted Lord Blake, provost of the college when it was completed, to write "the definition of an architect is someone you employ only once." And he saw to it that Stirling would have difficulty building in the UK for the next 20 years. Yet students continue to enjoy living in this strange machine, which squats on the edge of the river like a lunar module cast adrift, reclining back on its concrete legs to providing grandstand views through its full-height windows that enclose a sociable cloister space below.

Brick monolith … Louis Kahn in Ahmedabad. Photograph: Flickr/Nicholas Iyadurai

Indian Institute of Management dormitories, Ahmedabad, by Louis Kahn

IIM, Ahmedabad, India, 1962–74

Marching like a line of grain silos along the edge of Louis Kahn's IIM campus in Ahmedabad, the monumental forms of the student dormitories are characterised by rows of cylindrical stair towers and giant circular openings punched through the walls, braced by big concrete beams. Conceived as a dense weave of open and closed spaces, inspired by traditional Indian urban patterns, the campus follows a monastic plan with individual cells linked by cloisters and walkways, designed to encourage chance encounters. The dormitory organisation reinvents the idea of the Oxbridge staircase, with rooms positioned either side of the silo stair tower at various levels, while generous landings are big enough to allow informal teaching and studying in small groups.

Mountain retreat … Casa di Accademia in Mendrisio. Photograph: Könz-Molo

Casa dell'Accademia, Mendrisio, by Könz-Molo

Accademia di Architettura, Mendrisio, Switzerland, 1998–2006

Like two concrete knives sliced into the sloping hillside on the edge of Mendrisio, the two wings of the Casa dell'Accademia thrust forward to frame a spectacular view of the snow-capped Swiss Alps. Designed by Könz-Molo and Barchi architects, the complex looks more like a swish Alpine ski retreat than student halls – which makes it a popular choice among students at the town's architecture school. Bedrooms open on to shared kitchen and living rooms that face each other, either side of a rolling green garden, forming a vertical stack of domestic scenes, animated strata of social life played out across the facades. Open galleries between the flats provide circulation, as well as acting as extensions of the living areas, where long banqueting tables are erected for end of term feasting.

Student cog … Copenhagen's Tietgen halls. Photograph: Lundgaard & Tranberg

Tietgen Student Halls, Ørestad, by Lundgaard & Tranberg

Ørestad, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2006

360 bedrooms radiate around this 360 degree panoptican of a building, designed by Danish architects Lundgaard & Tranberg. Conceived as a vertical village, the cog-like structure is arranged as a seven-storey rotunda of stacked student communities, with individual rooms facing outwards, like tapering slices of pie, while double-height pairs of kitchens and common living rooms poke into the circular courtyard within. The facades are clad in copper and oak, while the interiors are left as raw concrete and plywood, jazzed up with brightly coloured curtains and furniture, turning the interior courtyard into an animated colour wheel.

Bungalow village … Munich's Olympic student villas. Photograph: Jens Masmann

Olympic student village, Munich, by Bogevischs Büro

Munich, Germany, 2010

The design of the 1972 Munich Olympic Games might be well remembered for its stripped-back graphics and the startling tent-like roof that dipped and dived above the stadium. But what few might recall is the women athletes' village – a nondescript field of 800 bungalows. Packed in dense grid of pedestrian alleyways, just over two metres wide, the development was not easily let as commercial housing after the games, so the student services department took it over to run as student dorms. By 2007, the buildings had become so dilapidated they were demolished and rebuilt with slight tweaks by Bogevischs Büro architects – creating an award-winning scheme that is now the most popular place for students to live in the city. Each little house is a self-contained flat, with a mezzanine bed level that leads on to a roof terrace, while a worktop extends across the full width of the room, in front of a low horizontal window. One of the chief draws is that the students are allowed to paint the front of their houses, turning the village into a riotous collage of lively murals.

What are your favourite student housing projects? Let us know in the comment thread below.