If you love the sense of community at multi-day outdoor music festivals like Glastonbury, Coachella and Bonnaroo but hate the mud, dust, noise and filthy porta-potties, this hostel was designed just for you. Cao Pu Studio designed ‘Together Hostel’ as an indoor camping experience, with guests staying in translucent individual ‘tents’ under a common roof. The experience emphasizes socializing, with lots of shared interactive spaces, but provides a tad more privacy than the average hostel bunk room.

The tents are organized in groups of four or five, making the hostel ideal for small groups traveling together, or for travelers prioritizing making new connections with strangers. Each tent is equipped with power sockets, extension cords and reading lights. Each of the timber-framed structures is finished in frosted polycarbonate, which doesn’t offer total privacy, but at least gives occupants a sense of their own personal space within the larger hostel without shutting them off altogether. If you’re backpacking, you can even roll out your sleeping pad in the theater area at night instead of sleeping in a ‘tent’ for a lower rate.

There’s a food court with lots of seating, a shop, a bar, a small theater space, a kitchen, offices and plenty of private showers and restrooms in addition to the tents, which come in single or double sizes. Modular tables in the central hall fit together like puzzle pieces, creating larger or smaller surfaces depending on whether you want to sit with a big group or dine alone.

The concept capitalizes on growing trends (voluntary or not) toward living in smaller spaces and in closer quarters with others rather than spreading out in suburban-style homes. People who travel on the cheap are accustomed to giving up space and privacy in exchange for a good deal, and this design makes the experience feel cleaner and more intentional. Would you stay at the ‘Together Hostel?’

In Japan, the rooms aren’t much larger than coffins – tiny stacked pods with beds, a television, a radio and little else. But one company is seeking to take that ‘capsule hotel’ concept and make it more livable. Lookotels plans to roll out prefab modular hotels in Spain that are quick to construct and cheap to maintain, with rooms around 100 square feet.

Each energy-efficient 100-room hotel will be built (offsite) and assembled within six months, offering low-cost travel lodging that emphasizes modernity and convenience with self check-in and -out kiosks. No shared bathrooms here – the diminutive sleeping quarters include their own private bathrooms as well as a sofa bed, television, desk, chair and television. A 24-hour service line allows a small staff to attend to guests’ needs.

The capsule hotel movement started in the 1970s with Japan’s famed Nakagin Capsule Tower, which was scheduled to be demolished until its architect Kisho Kurokawa realized that his design could allow the modules to be ‘unplugged’ and replaced. While many such pod hotels are now more often used as low-cost homes for low-paid urban workers or the jobless, others are getting modern makeovers. The recently opened 9h Hotel in Kyoto provides just enough space to sleep for $50 a night.

Lookotels has secured financing to build 10 hotels over the next 5 years throughout Europe, and is seeking partners in the U.S.