My chambers were up stairs at No. — Wall-street. At one end they looked upon the white wall of the interior of a spacious sky-light shaft, penetrating the building from top to bottom. This view might have been considered rather tame than otherwise, deficient in what landscape painters call “life.” But if so, the view from the other end of my chambers offered, at least, a contrast, if nothing more. In that direction my windows commanded an unobstructed view of a lofty brick wall, black by age and everlasting shade; which wall required no spy-glass to bring out its lurking beauties, but for the benefit of all near-sighted spectators, was pushed up to within ten feet of my window panes. Owing to the great height of the surrounding buildings, and my chambers being on the second floor, the interval between this wall and mine not a little resembled a huge square cistern.
…
Imagine my surprise, nay, my consternation, when without moving from his privacy, Bartleby in a singularly mild, firm voice, replied, “I would prefer not to.”
I sat awhile in perfect silence, rallying my stunned faculties. Immediately it occurred to me that my ears had deceived me, or Bartleby had entirely misunderstood my meaning. I repeated my request in the clearest tone I could assume. But in quite as clear a one came the previous reply, “I would prefer not to.”
It's very likely they thought of this and planned sufficient fire detectors, sprinklers, cutting-fire doors and emerging stairs and exits.
In a 11 floors building the occupants would not be evacuating from the windows.
You can't let 4500 people out of 11 floors bulding using firetruck ladders or having people jumping out and be caught on life nets. There should be enough emergency stairs and they can be built or not despite the rooms having windows or not.
> It's very likely they thought of this and planned sufficient fire detectors
From the pictures in the linked article at least two people per unit can only leave their rooms through the shared kitchen. So I wouldn't bet on it, seems to me as if they optimized for size with little to no thought on anything else. Even without the fire hazard having to go through the kitchens working area to get in and out of your room just asks for problems when it is in use.
In architecture “entrances” is not equal to “emergency exits”. This structure has two entrances, but a dozen emergency exits (which exceeds fire code).
There is logic behind the words of Charles Munger and also on his opposition.
Frankly though if Charles Munger is financing the project they should let them do it.
It might work out great or terribly. We'll find out and Charles Munger will pay for it.
> It was great up until the covid started, staying in an apartment with no windows and no access to other facilities within the building isn't worth it.
Everyone votes with their money.
There will be other options available to the students.
Students should be the ones making the choice of where to live based on the things they value.
If the project is significantly cheaper and in practice there is not so much difference, some students might graduate with equal results to others with windows but with less debt to repay given the savings in accomodation.
Sure. Why not. A poor, struggling university -- with only $161 BILLION in their endowment -- probably can't make ends meet without $200M "donations," with specious strings attached, like this one.
Maybe college is about learning stuff and having a roomie to challenge and help you. I doubt the powers that be are worried about you wanting a long-term relationship.
Remember that people having sex while not married has only been acceptable for perhaps 50 years to society, which post-dates many colelge buildings. There might be lots of people who want to dissuade people from "illicit liasons" by pairing them up in rooms to make things harder ;-)
Not to be nit-picky, but I'd just add the caveat "having sex while not married has become fashionable in the last 50 years, after a few hundred years of Catholic puritanism"... Sex outside of marriage has been extremely acceptable in many non-western societies at basically all stages of human development.
Yeah I always thought this was a reasonably big difference with the US. What if you don't get along with your roommate? I'm all for communal living as a student, but you need some kind of space that's only yours, even if it's quite small.
Btw some of the London unis do make people share. At least one friend plus my wife were having to share. Drives people nuts, especially if the other person has some issue like snoring or excessive partying.
He's exaggerating (or maybe it's the case at UCSB), since it's usually only true for first year undergraduate (among "traditional" students starting right high school. I think older students usually live off campus). As for relationships, most people end their high school relationship before college, or the two go to a different college, so it's long distance.
I actually found it formative to be forced to share that space and resolve (inevitable) tensions that arise. And since it's usually randomized, you end up with someone you might not have normally met. Of course some people have bad experiences, and can request re-assignment.
I'd say I got similar benefits living on a shared corridor (single kitchen, bathroom, etc. between 8 individual bedrooms). Sharing a bedroom still just seems bizarre.
When I was an undergraduate in Oklahoma in the early 2000s, Freshmen had to share dorms but after that one could pay extra to not share the room, although the bathroom was still shared. However, when I was at USC for my MS housing was extremely limited and while there were a handful of single-person dorms, almost everyone had 2+ person setups and even then it was like winning a lottery ticket to get any on campus housing at all. Later during my PhD at UCSD, it was again enormously difficult to get any on campus housing and I had roommates in campus housing for 6 years. There wasn't another option.
Maybe things have changed, but when I was an undergraduate in Oklahoma in the early 2000s
You had to share rooms as a grown-man doctoral student for six years? That's absolutely bonkers. Why would we ask anyone to do that? How can someone have an adult life like that?
It wasn't fun. Rent was $800 per month on an income of $1800 per month for a 2 bedroom university apartment. I was considered lucky to get such a sweet deal, since off campus housing was more money with greater commuting requirements, but graduate students all make the same amount.
It's bullshit. Your own dorm room is not "unheard of" in the US. Depends on the school. Undergrad freshmen almost always have a roommate, and seniors almost never.
My undergrad experience: by policy, freshmen had roommates, sophomores and above lived alone unless they wanted a roommate.
Interesting, but also not a perfect guide since that UK median wealth is mostly held in more expensive housing, which parents of university-age kids are often still paying mortgages on, and the students will take longer still to own
And US university education itself is much more expensive. Genuinely bizarre how when something often costs six figures, shared bedrooms are the norm and eliminating windows is seen as a viable alternative. Still, you have better college sports teams I guess...
At Cambridge we had a great compromise in the form of a "double set", in a building built in 1825: two very small private bedrooms, which share a lounge. A floor of the building had two or three of these, which then share a kitchen.
Where I went in Aberdeen, each floot had a 6 small, private bedrooms, and a shared, combined kitchen/lounge area (which was also pretty small).
I would have absolutely hated it if I'd had to share a bedroom with someone else! Aside from generally wanting my own space with privacy, how the hell is that supposed to work when you're bringing sexual partners back to your room?!
If you come home and find a handwritten sign on your bedroom door, you sleep in that lounge area. Aside from that, you either work out an arrangement or everybody gets comfortable with one roommate and their partner having sex as quietly as possible under the covers while the other tries to sleep.
That's crazy - you'd end up taking it in turns sleeping in the lounge every other night! Plus the lounge is supposed to be for everyone to use, not as a dormitory for those exiled from their own rooms!
It wasn't that bad. The sign was just for surprise situations. Everybody knew that if you abused the sign, your roommate was entirely within their rights to just walk in.
I did four years in shared rooms, and basically everybody figures out how to cooperate and work things out.
> Even in the UK, ...., every undergraduate has always gotten an individual bedroom
This is mostly true but not universal - when I was in UG accommodation in the mid-2000 it was indeed mostly individual, but there was also some small fraction of shared rooms available, that were a little cheaper than my (probably somewhat subsidised) £50/week individual room.
Yeah. In Finland these days the most common mode of student living is an individual studio. Sharing the same flat (common kitchen/living room, individual bedrooms) used to be more common but they’re really falling out of favor. Sharing the same bedroom? That’s just unthinkable and only happens in US movies and TV series.
I guess Canada can be lumped with the US in this case :) The whole concept of a “dormitory” is simply foreign here outside of hostels and niche boarding schools. Student housing is mostly normal-looking apartment buildings.
When I went to school in the 90s, as a freshman, we had 3 students to a single room (at least mine). 1 bunk bed, one single bed. I remember it was normally 2 to a room but we had overcrowding issues at time time. It was fine, I didn't have any issues with my roommates, but I didn't hang out with them much either. When you're that close, you learn how to get along with anyone. We were freshman and didn't spend a lot of time in our room anyway. We would study in the library and hang out in our friend's rooms, or outside. I moved to off-campus housing after a couple of years and kinda regretted it. Our dorm was men on the bottom two floors and women on the top two floors. It was a lot of fun, I remember the time fondly.
I shared a room with an unrelated adult every year I was an undergraduate in the UK, and saved a lot of money in the process. Those were the days - long gone - when you could rent a room in central London for £60/week, I paid more like £30-40. Some students had 3 to a room.
I would have eagerly accepted a windowless room for myself rather than having a roommate my first year in college, and I know my roommate would have been much better off without having to share a room with a jackass like I was when I was 18.
My children each suffered in different ways from being forced to share a bedroom with someone when they entered college as well.
In my completely layman opinion, I think that the shared living space with private bedroom (even windowless) is a sensible compromise that will result in a better quality of life for the students there.
Some universities in the US have apartments instead of dorms at least. I went to UT Dallas (graduated 2007), where they have apartments. Freshman apartments are 4-bedroom units with each student getting their own bedroom (and pairs of students sharing a bathroom), and apartments available to others are mostly 1-2 bedroom units (with each student getting their own bathroom) with a few 4-bedroom units scattered around.
With that said, I did hear that after I graduated they added dorms for freshmen, but I also heard that the dorms all had single rooms, with the only difference between the dorms and the apartments was that the dorms had communal bathrooms.
For what it's worth, I would not have gone to any school where I would've had to share a bedroom. I'm an intensely private person, and if I couldn't go to college anywhere I wouldn't have to share a bedroom I'd just have entered the workforce at 18 and continued living with my parents till I could afford to move out.
I and most people I went to school with (BYU 2007-2011) shared a room for at least part of their college years. For me, it was worth it for ~30% lower rent
> Obviously, it would be better if every student could have a penthouse with perfect views in all four directions. But we don't do that because we can't get enough students to live conveniently close together.
This is a logic fallacy, but I don't know the name of it. "We all agree that all students can't have a penthouse. So why do you care if we stuff them in windowless rooms?"
He wants to compare windowless rooms to a cruise ship. You spend a WEEK on a cruise ship. I had an openable window in my dorm room (in the days before every room in a university was a hotel suite). I cannot imagine living 9 months of my life in a room with no actual window.
> This is a logic fallacy, but I don't know the name of it. "We all agree that all students can't have a penthouse. So why do you care if we stuff them in windowless rooms?"
Not sure about a fallacy but he's essentially saying: because it can't be the best option, the worst is acceptable.
It's as if there aren't options in between and this isn't just optimization and greed run amuck against the human condition. It reminds me of one of the newer plane seating layouts I saw with alternating seats.
You know, it would be even more optimal if they didn't actually live in the building at all and just sent him money every week, wouldn't he like that even more?
I think this line of reasoning is completely unsubstantiated. I sleep in a room with a window covered up, which I never open, and it’s just fine. Because I don’t spend my whole day in that room. Asserting that it’s some kind of a giant problem for undergrads to sleep in a windowless room, when that building has plenty of well lit common space with windows, is just absurd.
Worst? There are multiple axes:
- proximity to campus
- private bedroom
- land used / density
- windows
- furnishing
- common areas
- price
- etc
Why can’t we try different combinations of that and let people self-optimize? One of the big trade-offs here is that putting every room on the exterior means making a long narrow building, which means “dead” space between builds (less density) and more exterior walls (construction cost). Light wells could maybe give you “windows” in that you could have some real sunlight, but they have zero view, privacy concerns, aren’t exits, and are much dimmer than true exterior windows. Courtyards have to be big enough to not be glorified lightwells, and they basically have the same problem as narrow buildings. We could try to build up for more density, but that comes with several more axes of trade-offs.
If everyone is saying no other building does this, maybe we should stop relying on emotion and get some actual data. UCSB should just get a clause saying he’ll pay to tear it down after 10 years if psych studies of residents are damning, and then we have a billionaire really betting on his vision and funding an honest attempt at proving a viable alternative.
> Why can’t we try different combinations of that and let people self-optimize?
In an ideal free market, this would work fine.
This is not an ideal free market. Many of the students coming to UCSB will be relatively poor—as in, can't realistically afford to pay any extra for a better living situation. So rather than being able to choose whether they value a better living situation or a cheaper one more highly, they will simply be forced into the worst—ie, cheapest—living situation available to them short of a cardboard box.
Stop trying to apply idealized free-market logic to real-world problems with much, much stricter constraints on the real, living people involved.
Okay, so we make a windowed building that houses 1000+ fewer students and those 1000 are just left to the wolves, paying more elsewhere or joining the depressing ranks of the UC homeless? I’m not thinking ideally, I’m recognizing that the real world has real opportunity costs to every decision and nothing happens in a vacuum. I hate the CA real estate situation as much as anyone but short-term solutions have to be realistic and long-term ones… may never happen.
The lack of windows is not a required monetary tradeoff here. It is a deliberate ideological choice on the part of the donor. While I can't say for certain that every student's sleeping space could be given windows while keeping the same occupancy, your argument makes a false dichotomy.
>I cannot imagine living 9 months of my life in a room with no actual window.
Why would you be spending a literal nine months of year in your little windowless dorm bedroom, though? Were you a shut-in in college? The whole point is you sleep there, maybe occasionally get a little privacy there, and otherwise live your life in the rooms that do have windows. Or alternately, venture outside occasionally.
I understand why people want a window, but people make this out to be hell on earth or something.
People are different. Some students I lived with only showed up to sleep in the dorm, you could hardly see them around. Some like me preferred to study at my own desk.
I would go crazy if I had to stay there, others would not notice lack of a window.
I am not 100% critical of the windowless room, however this should be an option and not the only option (I strongly believe that once adopted this would quickly become the de-facto only accommodation option for average student)
Well it isn’t the only option. In fact currently nobody there has this option at all, it’s still being discussed. If this is built, people just get more options.
I live in Tokyo, where they solve housing crises by just building more stuff. Zoning restrictions are minimal. I pay 1300 for a 700 square foot 2 bedroom 15 minutes from a major shopping area by subway, no parking. You can also live right downtown in a 200sqft 1room for as little as 600 if you look around. There are even 100-150 sqft apartments in the trendiest areas.
Maybe the idea of a room that small doesn’t appeal to you. But by letting the option exist, Tokyo keeps rents low. All the people that do take those places stop bidding on the bigger ones, which helps prevent your rent from raising too. More apartments and more Choice is good. 11,000 new units should have a big impact on supply there.
What you are saying makes sense for Tokyo, a huge real estate market, but not for a campus. Let's suppose dorm A costs 60% to build as dorm B so that students can choose to live in dorm A for $600 and dorm B for $1000. But one year more students want to pay the $1000. Do you have an auction? Highest bidder? No, you are stuck -- you will make some live in dorm A. Real estate is not like choosing between flavors of ice cream and having manufacturers adjust quantities - it's fixed on the small scale.
A big market has hundreds of thousands if not millions of housing units of all different stripes that are more or less on a continuum. Individual units are added or removed all the time. Colleges can't tear down dorms or build new ones as quickly, they are stuck with four big dorms and the next one ain't gonna be built for another 30 years.
So it just makes a lot more sense to build dorms that 95% of your freshman class is fine inhabiting, so that no one is stuck in a dorm they really don't like, because you do not have the variety of housing options on a college campus as you do in the city of Tokyo. With these smaller scales, fixed investment requires more of a one size fits all approach, or at least a minimum bar approach.
2. The University already has lots of conventional dorms with windows.
3. This building costs the school nothing to build and adds massively more units than a conventional design would.
The dorm has 11,000 beds. It’s hard to overstate just how cost-effective that is.
From what I’ve heard, the plan is to rent these out for $1000 a month, which unfortunately still counts as a bargain these days in that area. But they could likely rent them out for a lot less. 11,000 dorms at 1000 a month is $11 million a month and $132 million a year. Even if the university was paying for the cost of the building themselves, which they are not, they could still get a return over the initial 200 million in less than two years anyway! They could likely rent these out for $500, cover all their maintenance costs and utilities and still manage to make a solid profit each year.
That’s how you solve a housing crisis: you just build lots of apartments. But no matter how bad the housing crisis gets in California, nobody ever seems to consider that. All anybody ever looks at is the downside of an unconventional building design, without stopping to consider the massive opportunity cost of not building all of these places.
I just don't see Munger's angle here. I mean, why not donate the money and let the university handle everything else? What is his line of thinking exactly? He thinks the university will waste the money or something?
Charitable interpretation is that you want to donate to help people, but you think you know better than administrators, who don’t always have the same goals as the people you’re trying to help.
Wanting to donate to people in a poor country but not to the local regime, for example.
I think his angle is he thinks this is an efficient design and the best use of his money.
Keeping 4500 students in a single 11 storey building is pretty efficient. And using all the natural light space for common areas and classroom is pretty novel.
It’s hard for me to know Munger’s mind, but I think his donation is intended to improve how dorms are designed beyond this single building and school. So his investment is not to just house these students, but to help colleges better house students.
Good point. I should clarify my comment by saying “After reading the article, it’s hard for me to know Munger’s mind as to the motivation he has in funding this building…”
Donating with stipulations is such a weird thing to do. Either you trust the acceptor, or you find someone else to donate to. Why give money to someone if you don't trust them to use it wisely?
Because he has thought deeply about building design and believes he knows the best way to do it. If the university thinks it knows better, it’s free to reject the money and he can donate it to some other worthy cause.
In collusion with someone inside the institution, as a way to get around internal budgetary disputes?
That said, I don't understand why even the boring version is confusing. Someone can want to help an institution achieve one of its goals, but not others of its goals.
Donating with stipulations is a very normal thing to do for entities with the money to do so. You give money to the organisation because they are best placed to do x in terms of other resources. You know that the organisation also does y and z, which are less important to you, so you ask them to use it for x. No different to hiring people really: just because you trust they can do a good job doesn't mean you let them work on whatever they want.
Donating money with floorplan layout stipulations is weird though, especially when it's the recipient saying "no, that layout of the building that'll bear your name is so mean it'll reflect badly on us"
In the Maimonides ladder of charity giving, giving charity with stipulations on how it can be used, while also acknowledging the giver and having the giver and receiver each knowing of each other and the nature of the gifts is actually one of the lowest forms of charity [0]. It's charity with strings attached and the inherent ego-centricity and guilt-tripping of the giver to the givee. There's no altruism in this "gift". It's all self-interest.
This is a good thing to recognize, however I think in this case it's more along the lines of Munger having a novel vision for a specific dorm layout, and saying to the university "Hi. I got this idea for a dorm, I will foot the bill if you are up for doing it my way". This is hardly the same as "giving grudgingly"...
In fact it feels wrong to cast the matter in this light. At worst it is more akin to Maimonides' concept of Utilitarian Friendship, and the current furor perhaps serving as the “When the benefit vanishes, love vanishes” moment.
Yes, tying the design demand to the donation is the core of the problem.
It puts the university in a no-win situation of either foregoing the best practices of design review, or foregoing $200 million.
If it’s actually a good design, it should stand up to scrutiny like any other building design does. The most famous buildings you’ve ever heard of passed through a design review and made revisions. It’s absurd to think that Frank Gehry gets design-reviewed but Charlie Munger does not.
By exempting a design from review and revision, you get what they are getting now: a shitload of bad PR. If stakeholders can’t weigh in internally, they will attack externally. Left to fester, this could affect the university’s acceptance rate. Publicly disregarding the concerns of parents and students is not generally a great look in higher education.
> If it’s actually a good design, it should stand up to scrutiny like any other building design does.
Well, define scrutiny?
There's technical criticism from the standpoint of safety, for example. If it's not possible to evacuate this building in the event of a fire, that's an overriding concern.
There's also criticism from the standpoint of tradition or aesthetic. If the building is ugly or nontraditional, then that's a social problem. The university will need to choose between the taste of the donor and its own aesthetic.
The "natural light is necessary for mental health" argument is somewhere in between. A lot of the reaction seems to be a knee-jerk one about tradition and imagining life in a light-free (not just window-free) room, or rooms with poor ventilation. On the other hand, the article here at least alludes to studies on the matter.
> By exempting a design from review and revision
I think you're over-reading things? As I understand it, the building isn't exempt from review and revision, but Munger retains co-final approval with the university. It's not a one-shot "build these exact blueprints or nothing" deal.
To reflect on your earlier example, Frank Gehry gets design-reviewed, but if the clients want him to do something unacceptable he can still walk away.
It’s worth noting that this isn’t the first mostly-windowless dorm he’s built. His previous work at UM has generally very good reviews and was built without protest.
It sounds to me like the evidence so far is that Munger is correct, and on average people would rather have a small private room with a fake window and lower rent and than a shared room with a real window and higher rent. I’m not sure why this particular structure has provoked so much more outrage than the previous ones.
Edit: I previously mentioned the Stanford Munger Graduate Residence as well, but it appears that one is of more “traditional” layout (and is relatively expensive). Thanks dkarp for pointing this out.
Yeah, IIRC I lived in (that) Munger for a year, and had a large, windowed bedroom and bathroom to myself. My 3 roommates had the same, and we shared a living room and kitchen. Not really anything like this new building.
i see your point, minimum size rules for appartents in Ireland cause similar issues.
But I draw the line at windows. They are a basic human necessity and a fire hazard mitigation. I stayed in a hostel underground once in Liverpool, and it was aweful... I was not rich at college and shared crappy houses all the while, but I would not take this up under any circumstances.
Based on the stats, you're probably underweighting the damage of very high debt levels and overweighting the importance of windows. Although there are serious questions to ask about the ventilation of these rooms - as long as they've got satisfactory answers it looks like a good idea.
The options can't be perfect or nothing. The options should be perfect, good and bad.
I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that windows and manageable debt levels can coexist.
This design isn't because students can't afford buildings with windows, it's because a billionaire has a fantasy that it's the optimal design for such a building, thinks architects who disagree are "ignorant", and is making his donation contingent on it.
An ignorant and devious billionaire plot to deprive us of our hard earned right to a window is the most entertaining thought I've had all week.
You have to admit that there is at least a chance that this is a good idea and Mr Munger has good advice on the subject? It isn't like the students are confined to their cell, they just need to sleep there. A lot of them may not consider a window important, particularly in the face of saving some money.
I think there's at least a chance the people opposing this also know what they're talking about (as indeed do the Building Regulations people in my country, where this design wouldn't be legal to let as accommodation). If Munger's had good advice on this it's not exactly coming across in his interview.
If your country has banned designs with no windows you're talking to a badly skewed sample of people experts. Obviously nobody would be able to figure out if the idea work well, since it is banned.
Months can go by without me raising the blind in my bedroom. While I certainly want a window there, I don't think it is essential.
You've gone from suggesting I'm possibly underestimating the quality of advice Munger receives, to insisting that in addition to Munger being correct that Californian architectural experts criticising his design are simply ignorant about buildings, literally every construction professional in the UK knows less than him about the habitability and safety of buildings because having banned certain designs, they can't possibly understand the reasoning behind their regulations. Wow, and I thought Elon Musk was Peak Contrarian Billionaire Worship.
> ...that literally every construction professional in the UK (as well as all the critical experts in California) must know less than him about the habitability and safety of buildings...
Not every one. But it does seem likely that Munger has access to people with more experience building windowless bedrooms than anyone in the UK. I've heard from a source on the internet that it would be illegal to have such experience in the UK, so I doubt anyone does.
It is a trivially obvious one. You won't have people with experience in a technique available if it has been banned. It is a safe guess that the US architects will be better at this than UK ones.
You will also find more experts in the practicalities of employing children where child labour is legal (or at least de facto tolerated). This doesn't mean that a billionaire who insist that everyone who objects to him hiring children to work in his factories is ignorant is correct, and the experts who think it's a bad idea just haven't employed enough children to know anything about the consequences.
Permanent accommodation which is multiple doors away from the nearest natural light source, relies on artificial means to circulate air and has a distinct lack of exits might find a few more supporters than child labour, but funnily enough the laws ended up in place for similar reasons. We saw what happened when we assumed that people must know best because they were rich enough to pay people to agree with them (and others were too poor and uninformed to have much choice)
What is trivially obvious is that you won't have a building design with windows in bedrooms if the person funding the design makes funding contingent on the building not having windows in bedrooms, as Munger states he's doing. In all probability the experts hadn't built masses of windowless cells backing onto windowless kitchens connected via windowless corridors to the outside world before (the reason the design is controversial, after all, is that its not exactly standard building practice in the US either) and probably had plenty of ideas on how to maximise floorplan whilst guaranteeing natural light to inhabited spaces, but they detailed this design because the person cutting the cheques told them to. Your implicit argument that a design constraint imposed by the ego of a billionaire design dilettante is likely to yield better advice than a design constraint imposed by regulators based on decades of built environment research is far from trivially obvious...
And if Munger had some insight the regulators missed, it's not exactly evident from the bizarre set of contradictions he offers up in the interview..
> It sounds to me like Munger is correct, and on average people would rather have a small private room with a fake window and lower rent and than a shared room with a real window and higher rent. I’m not sure why this particular structure has provoked so much more outrage than the previous ones.
There's something that feels off about this statement. It reads much like the articles that talk about how young millennials are "choosing" to live in pod houses/tiny homes when in reality they can't afford anything better. They are forced to live in these conditions which are then normalised by authors framing it as a free choice.
This isn’t the only residence on UM campus! The rest are “normal”. And what you said doesn’t align with the good reviews the pace gets, even compared to “normal” housing.
And to be honest, we’re always going to have to “force” people into some sort of living condition. There are more people than ever going to higher education, so people will have to accept either smaller living spaces, denser construction, higher costs, or longer commutes to school - space is (unfortunately) a rival good, and giving everybody a large dorm is likely not viable.
As I was reading the article, I started thinking this guy was right. At university, I would often have to get to a lab or whatever early in the morning and then get home late at night. I would have this sort of routine for weeks or months at a time. I may as well have had no windows.
I think as long as you get out during the day, and as a student, that’s probably likely, this sort of arrangement seems to make sense. But still offends me.
Of course. Your note does not seem consistent with the parent points. Different parties will propose conditional contribution. Those who do not agree with the project will retract the participation. The public does not decide on Munger's money, Munger will not decide over the public money.
The parent post makes no sense: Charlie Munger does not decide "what to build", he decides whether to participate.
> Charlie Munger does not decide "what to build", he decides whether to participate.
Sure, this is a convenient way to look at this particular situation. Yet I google "strings attached donation university" and see many instances of this crap: Koch brothers, John Allison, etc. It's serious enough that Harvard recently issued a "Gift Policy Guide" discourage strings-attached giving. Ironically, only the elite private universities have enough cachet to make such a policy stick.
Can they? I have seen politicians cut budgets whenever they smelled blood in the water, even when the idea was completely harebrained^1 . Just the offer existing may interfere with a proper building funded through public means.
^1 For some time German universities had to require higher fees from students, officially to provide an improved learning experience. Seeing that universities now had an alternative income source some states cut public funding, they didn't care about the specifics, the courts did, some universities ended up not heating their buildings during winter because they couldn't legally touch the money.
Raising taxes, primarily. Or at least force donations to public institutions to be no-strings-attached. Many years ago when I attended UCSB and this project was in its infancy, someone told me that UCLA has a long-term development plan where large donors can choose from a menu of pre-planned projects. Not sure how true that it, but much better idea.
But my more extreme view is that individuals should not be able to amass so many resources to begin with. It's absurd.
You meant to say "dictate" architecture, right? Well, it serves the university right for not building a dorm that was 13% smaller or cheaper. They obviously had that choice and decided to go with the donation option instead.
If it's the choice between this with no windows or one that's much further away or costs more, the choice isn't to do with the windows, but putting up with the lack of them.
Availability, cost. We live in a housing shortage and an era of housing exploitation.
I don't live in the US and don't know the local market, but a quick google says you need at least $2000 a month to get a basic apartment in Santa Barbara: https://www.apartments.com/santa-barbara-ca/. Who has that kind of money, especially combined with a full time education?
So instead of attempting to deliver cheaper dense housing for 5000 students close to campus, we should make a windowed one that houses 3000 and tell the other 2000 to go to Sacramento and start lobbying for new state laws? Or do we instead try to get solutions at multiple scopes and not let perfect be the enemy of good.
In essence, you could describe your stance as forcing all residents to pay a tax for a benefit that you deem is for their own good. In this case it’s windows, but would you support this stance for other reasons? What if it was that all rooms come with a large crucifix on the wall (wasting wall and floor space)?
I remember the stress of worrying about rent pretty clearly, especially given my room was basically a sleeping and hygiene chamber that I hardly spent time in, but still had to have for those two critical functions.
> They are forced to live in these conditions
I agree that the choice between crippling rent rates and having no access to windows is not a good one, but it seems a function of where we are economically. Base rents everywhere I've ever lived are much higher compared to minimum wage than they've been for past generations.
> I agree that the choice between crippling rent rates and having no access to windows is not a good one, but it seems a function of where we are economically. Base rents everywhere I've ever lived are much higher compared to minimum wage than they've been for past generations.
They are absurdly high and I think the people who are put in that position are doing what they feel is in their best interest. What worries and frustrates me is that many publications/people seem to be seeking to normalise the situation we're in rather than thinking about how we could provide a better standard of living to people.
> articles that talk about how young millennials are "choosing" to live in pod houses/tiny homes when in reality they can't afford anything better. They are forced to live in these conditions
"conditions"? 1 in 20 UC students is homeless [1] and they want to a build a 5,000 single occupancy rooms for 1.5 Billion. But somehow everyone and their mother finds a reason to veto new development.
I don't know US situation but this still seems expensive: 1.5Billion / 5000 == 300k USD per person. I understand the whole building provide also different kind of space but it still feels too expensive to build.
I don't why they cannot build simply longer buildings with each room having a window instead of big square one with most rooms not having window at all? Both such buildings would occupy the same amount of squares per meter.
A decade ago I was exchange student in Umea, Sweden and dorms were really good. In every corridor there where 8 rooms. Everyone had their own room + own small bathroom. Room was like 3x size of those in the article. Corridor had big shared kitchen and living room. Rent per month was like 450 euro. Campus was really big - it was basically a student city so there was a space for everyone. Those buildings were just simply longer. Building student campuses/universities outside of big cities also helped.
> I don't know US situation but this still seems expensive
It is expensive.
> I don't why they cannot build simply longer buildings
It's not simple. They have to deal with zoning laws, land owned/available to the university, costs (which you already think are too high) and maximizing occupancy etc, etc.
> Everyone had their own room + own small bathroom. Room was like 3x size
Sounds nice in Sweden... meanwhile in the UC system 1 in 20 students are homeless.
No, it's effectively 300k per room, not per person. This structure will be up for more than 1 semester and certainly up for more than than length of one person living in it.
That being said, I have no frame of reference for the cost of similar structures. It definitely sounds fairly expensive considering the size of the room + common area.
Munger is one of the most expensive residence halls at Stanford. The rooms are quite spacious compared to EV and Rains, and all the finishes are much nicer.
Looking at pictures online, the Stanford one seems to have windows.
The Michigan one doesn't have windows in the bedroom, but does have windows in the apartment (shared kitchen/living room of 7 bedrooms, i.e., common area.).[1][2]
The 3d render of the apartment in this article doesn't have any windows at all, anywhere! The windows in common areas they seem to be talking about are study spaces outside the apartment.
OK, I found an article with a floorplan[1]. This thing is not at all comparable to the Michigan dorms. Recall, in the Michigan dorms you have an apartment housing 7 people with a spacious, well-lit living room (6 windows, but the count isn't important.) Sure, you don't have a window in your bedroom, and that sucks, but to see the sun you just go through that one door.
But in this proposed building? Look at that insane floor plan[2]! It looks like a maze! If you're in one of those inner rooms, you exit your bedroom (no windows) into your apartment's common area (no windows), exit that to a long corridor that eventually leads to your "House's" common area, which finally has windows. But is the opposite way from the building's exit.
Just feels like its presented as undergraduate accommodation comes with either a shared room or a window. which is complete BS. I don't think this would even be allowed to be built in a lot of Europe.
If anyone is bored at work, here's a long discussion podcast that dives pretty deep into the architecture of Munger Hall (unloving dubbed 'the Cube' by locals):
As a point of reference, many hotels in China have windowless rooms. I wouldn't want to live in one, but, for a short stay I actually preferred it. There was much less noise in these "internal rooms". Normal rooms usually get a lot of street noise.
True, but you need the air inflow, and no windows suggests forced ventilation, which is still noise pollution (to my experience it can be very noisy, owing to both fans and engines).
>I’m not sure why this particular structure has provoked so much more outrage than the previous ones.
Nobody heard about the building in Michigan, so nobody talked about it. Also, in Ann Arbor it's very likely that the CoL is not so high that students are de facto forced to tolerate these conditions.
It's not really Munger who's the villain here, he instead plays the role of an enabler. There's no inherent reason that housing costs should be so high that students have to live in these awful boxes, it's because of the policies chosen by the City of Santa Barbara. For context, the population density in SB is about a quarter of that in SF.
What's outrageous is that students pay the price in mental health and fire safety for housing policy that benefits the well-off and well-connected seeking aesthetics and investment returns. What motivates people to comment is the implied risk of this callous abuse of construction restrictions ("zoning") being extended to other vulnerable populations.
The Michigan building houses just 630 graduate students who chose to live there. Over 98% of students live elsewhere. How does that show most people prefer it?
The bedrooms are much larger. They have individual bathrooms. And a number of reviews said at least the suites have windows. UCSB's wouldn't.
I like the design in principle, is there actual evidence for or against the idea of sleeping in a room with fake windows? I have a light based alarm clock that wakes me up, which is a vaguely similar concept, I've also used blackout blinds to block light from real windows in summer.
Personally, I think just knowing that is not real I’d enough to make me lose it if I had to live in a room like that. There’s something magical about waking up to the smell of the cool, morning air to me that I would desperately miss.
I think there are far better criticisms of the building than the fake windows. Like sharing a single shower with 7 other people who might take the same courses as me. Or how there's way too few entrances and exits.
It's strange how this interview with Munger completely focuses on the windows, the one concern that's both unavoidable in the design and addressed in the planning (by putting in fake windows)
Apparently I read the plan wrong, and it's actually two bathrooms with one shower each [1, page 39]. Which is better, but still cramped.
Sharing bathrooms is fine in principle, but with more than one per two people you start coordinating who has to wake up when to use it, and it gets worse the more people you have that want to go to class at the same time.
I'm not so sure that it would be all that bad even if it was just one shower per 7 people, based on my recollection of my college days.
I believe my house at Caltech has on average maybe 7-10 people per shower room, with each shower room having 2 or 3 shower stalls.
However, in four years there of showering at least once a day I only once ever had someone come in and use one of the other stalls when I was showering. People tended to try to avoid shower rooms that already had a stall in use and were almost always successful at this.
For the first two years, most people who lived in the parts of the house that I did and so would be competitors for the showers I would most likely use were in most of the same classes as me, because (1) the first two years of Caltech had a lot of core classes that everyone had to take, (2) room picks in my house were mostly by seniority, (3) rooms tended to be near other rooms of similar desirability and so people tended to have rooms near people in their year.
As long as there's ventilation I'd prefer it. I have double curtains full time but not having windows for light to peak through would appeal to me even more.
People that are experts in one field tend to assume they are experts in other fields.
I think this is a fundamental human flaw, rather than a personal one, because I easily make the same mistake if I’m not careful.
Of course, this belief is based on the assumption on how frequently I see it. Could be confirmation bias or me trying to write off my own problems as not being mine. :)
On the other hand, is an architecture degree the right credential to criticize the proposal? The strongest critique seems to come from the social science side with an argument that windowless rooms are bad for mental health.
I'm interested in hearing more about that, particularly whether there's a difference between windows and natural-spectrum light (the latter of which can be mimicked).
However, an architect has no particular authority on this subject. I can't give his opinion here any more weight than the manager who's hired architects before.
Architects take a lot of stuff into account when designing a building. Natural light is undoubtedly one of the considerations (and I expect them to know how important it is and why).
No indication of windowless dorms at Munger's alma mater, the University of Michigan (someone correct me if I'm getting this wrong), so my only guess is that Charlie became self-righteous about younger generations finding themselves more immersed in tech than the world around them.
...and removes windows to force people outside, thinking somehow that'll solve the problem?
It only shows that everyone who's sharp in one way is utterly clueless in another. My guess is that people will end up spending more time depressed (e.g via SAD) as a consequence of getting no exposure to nature and daylight in their own rooms while cramming as opposed to making themselves go outside, as Charlie intended.
I wonder if these outcomes will be measurable once a generation of students has made it through?
Interesting, the Munger apartments have one to two orders of magnitude more reviews than any of the other mid-rise residences (e.g The Collegian, Zaragon West, Tower Plaza Condo, etc)
Wondering if it's an odd outcome of media exposure or if it's a consequence of bought reviews. It'd be interesting to compare the reviews of the building to other graduate residences elsewhere.
According to a number of other comments on here, it also has many more windows.
It's also grad student housing, which means students actually have some measure of choice in it, rather than just being assigned to live there when they arrive as a first-year.
The important thing is to have developed sharpness enough to sensibly escape the Dunning-Kruger effect towards its opposite the Socrates principle, and you'll probably find more of that here than elsewhere.
Your guess about 'forcing them outside' seems wildly off base. The article pretty clearly points out that the goal is to remove the practice of bunking freshmen with strangers.
> Your guess about 'forcing them outside' seems wildly off base. The article pretty clearly points out that the goal is to remove the practice of bunking freshmen with strangers.
> In an Oct. 24 resignation letter to the committee that leaked on the image sharing site Imgur, [former lead architect Dennis] McFadden described the project as a "social and psychological experiment with an unknown impact on the lives and personal development" of students
> McFadden, however, is doubtful of the building's effectiveness. In an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, he wrote that the building "attempts to engineer social experiences" by placing communal spaces at the perimeter of the building, which would receive natural light.
> "It is meant to build community, encourage peer-to-peer interaction, promote engagement and relationship building, foster an environment of learning and support, and provide necessary resources and amenities to support a 24/7 on-campus living experience," [University spokesperson Andrea] Estrada said.
I wasn't pulling it out of thin air; it's the foundational ethos for the design. Everything else is just an added layer of PR.
Its not mentioned at all in this article, not sure why, but in construction, every state has a building code, and specifically every state has a requirement for a window to be built inside of each sleeping room for egress fire safety. I would question how this would pass any plan review, not to mention inspection [1] [2]
Relatedly, an outside window isn't going to be very useful for egress when you're in a high-rise. No, this particular dorm isn't quite a high-rise, but the point is that exceptions are entirely necessary and legitimate. This aspect of building codes probably wasn't mentioned because it's not relevant.
I've never seen an apartment complex that had bedrooms in it that didn't have any windows... I have built apartment buildings and they need to have sprinklers (circa 2010) but more importantly they need to have Windows... the cost savings is probably null considering that you're going to be filling the space with concrete, and when the fire happens, which they do, you'll probably get sued into
bankruptcy by anybody living in such a building with no windows.
From what I understand you're not even allowed to have an interior room that's a sleeping quarters that doesn't have a window, and if anybody found out that you were doing that it would get shut down immediately.
I interested in a future where TVs have a good as color and image quality as reality (maybe 50 years out from now).
TVs are cheaper per unit area than insulation windows, could be providing a view of exactly what a windows would with streaming cameras, but could also let you travel the world by providing votes from other locations. They would also let you up the r value of the walls easily :)
TVs can not have depth like a window, where your eyes have to flex to change focal length to bring distant things into focus. Even “3D” movies and TV cannot do this.
It is potentially an issue for long-term eye health. If your eyes spend most of their time within a small range of focal distances, the muscles you use for focusing essentially fall out of shape. This can cause a person to need multi-focal glasses sooner than otherwise.
It also limits the mental health benefits of looking “out a window.” Your brains knows whether a scene is real or fake based on focal depth, regardless of resolution.
are we all stuck in competition with each other about who is more productive and smart? the economy is the embodiment of that fact and will just extract us as much as its can forever? is it possible to build and own our life instead of being forced to labor until near the end of life? why technology improved so much but the work is never done? can individual have control of his life or we stuck in doing what the economy dedicates? is there a place on earth is not owned by anyone?
> the economy is the embodiment of that fact and will just extract us as much as its can forever?
No it isn't. The economy isn't zero sum.
>is it possible to build and own our life instead of being forced to labor until near the end of life?
By "forced to labor", are you talking about having to work for someone else, or having to labor at all? It's clear that the former is possible (ie. start your own business), and the latter is a pipe dream as long as we're not in a post-scarcity economy
economy is reflected by the the decisions of individuals and groups and what they priorities.
Im not talking about post-scarcity economy Im talking about trying to get there, right now it feels we only moving away from it, and the labor we do is not constructive to us or valued very little.
Its not the competition that is bad. Is the things we have to fight with each other to get. humans conquered all of the earth twice, now we fight on how to divide the prize and get to the top of society. thats the struggle of being alive as a human, if you are Chinese or American or anything.
From go, this article is bullshit. Yes, I flagged it, and yes, it's against guidelines to say this, but no, I don't think this should be on HN's front page, and it should be flippantly dismissed.
Briefly, the article is an opinion piece crafted to stoke outrage. It is crafted to make you stupider. It does not give you full access to all the information for you to make your own informed opinion about what's going on. It is clickbait, and not worthy of your attention.
From go, this comment is bullshit. Yes, I flagged it, and yes, it's against guidelines to say this, but no, I don't think this should be on HN's comment section, and it should be flippantly dismissed.
Briefly, the comment is an opinion piece crafted to stoke outrage. It is crafted to make you stupider. It does not give you full access to all the information for you to make your own informed opinion about what's going on. It is clickbait, and not worthy of your attention.
The article includes a quick recap on the situation, an interview where the designer defends their concept, renders of what the rooms would look like, and a link to the actual, 80-pages-long proposal in PDF. I think that's more than enough.
More to the point: I followed their link to the proposal, saw what a typical residential floor plan would look like (page 59), I contrasted them with the reasons the guy gave for this design, and I now agree with the "prison for students" comments. So they did provide me with full access to all the information for me to make my own informed opinion.
The subtitle, "Charles Munger says artificial windows are, in some ways, 'actually better' than the real deal", is a bit misleading and obviously to stoke outrage.
However it's not an article. It's a transcribed interview that you can listen to at the top. I listened to it and their editing doesn't change the sentiment of his responses in my opinion.
Arguably articles should be taken more on their ability to provide a relevant place for a particular discussion on HN, rather than the quality of article itself. This was a topic I was interested in and wanted to see what the HN demographic thought about it, so for that reason alone it's a 'good' post if enough people share that perspective.
The dorms look amazing provided they're at the right price. And since there are so many of them, I can guarantee the price will be right.
I don't know who "this billionaire" is, but he is definitely 100% right here. Dorms in Asian cities are like this and they're a godsend for students, workers, etc. for inner city, affordable and temporary living.
Munger is a real proponent of Chinese-style capitalism and generally praises the idea of social-credit systems.
It only makes sense that his architecture style would also favor brutalism. He probably repurposed some of the designs of the old commie-blocks from eastern europe.
Do you know what brutalism means in architecture? It means exposed concrete, Munger's design is not brutalism. Also what "commie-blocks from eastern europe" are you referencing? I can't think of any eastern european apartment buildings that resemble this design in any way. (They tend to have windows)
Housing 4500k students it is about 333k per student. Which does seem incredibly expensive given the tiny and low-quality space per student, but I have no idea about building costs in general.
Part of the shtick here is that the common spaces are large and of very high quality (for dorm rooms). The sticker price may also include land purchase, and almost certainly includes furnishings. The last thing to note is that all construction is very expensive right now due to materials shortages.
I'm a Brit so it's it's a bit different here but... I was glad to have the option to stay in a shitty little room with no ensuite and bare brick walls at the bottom a of steep hill that campus was atop. It saved me 1000s of pounds over people who paid literally twice as much just to have gold coloured taps.
Since my day that option has been removed because the government have decreed everyone have their own toilet and shower. But the result is kids in vastly more debt.
Yes, but that is because Britain is absolutely terrible at land management. Huge tracts get no or minimal use because owners are land banking or whatever. This slows or stops development all over the place and results in high property costs.
This dorm really is an abomination and the correct response here would've been for the university to say "thanks, but no thanks" to Munger's money with the stipulations he placed on it.
In following this story someone raised the comparison to University of Cincinnati's Sander Hall [1], which was actually less crowded than this. This now demolished building had problems from criminal offences to evacuations caused by people intentionally setting off fire alarms.
Evacuating this dorm in such cases is going to be a nightmare given the ratio of students to fire stairs and you know that's going to happen.
Architecture matters. The experience matters. Common areas, such as they are, with this many students will undoubtedly turn feral almost immediately. Putting people in windowless cells but defending it as "everyone gets their own room" is not the solution.
Billionaires reach an age when the only thing they value is putting their name on everything. It's why there are so many concert halls, colleges, etc named "Carnegie" (after Andrew Carnegie, the 19th century steel industrialist). You don't have to take their money. I'm sure UCSB isn't struggling for cash.
Needs pointing out: You are asserting stuff like "This dorm really is an abomination" and "Common areas, such as they are, with this many students will undoubtedly turn feral almost immediately" with out actually seeming to support your arguments.
This comes off as hyperbolic and biased, and more likely, some combination of thoughtlessness and arrogance which makes the opposing view seem more honest.
Your reference to a 50 year old dorm in another state, with a completely different layout and a culture more informed by the film Animal House than Instagram hardly bears up. The building is shorter with more space for emergency exits. It may well have integrated fire suppression and active monitoring. And each of these sleeping spaces with no windows is said to attach to a 'house' with a private common area and real windows. Nothing like the isolated skyscraper dorm you link to.
Moreover, touchy feely points like "Architecture matters. The experience matters." only raise red flags for me, especially when considered with your next point:
"Billionaires reach an age when the only thing they value is putting their name on everything."
This particular billionaire clearly has an enthusiastic engagement with the details of the project and a vision for solving the problems he's mentioned in the article, namely removing the need for freshmen to lodge with a stranger.
A billionaire that just wanted to "put their name on everything" would pay the money, let the architect do their thing and never consider what it would be like to live in the results, right? This guy seems to be trying to fix the complaints from his eight(!) children, so future generations don't face the same.
You might have a point buried in your post somewhere, but in your rush to slam this whole thing without backing it up, you've lost me.
> each of these sleeping spaces with no windows is said to attach to a 'house' with a private common area and real windows. Nothing like the isolated skyscraper dorm you link to.
Yeah, but not quite. First, these "sleeping spaces with no windows" are apartments, a cluster of 7 single-occupancy bedrooms, with a common area in the middle, with kitchenette, shared bathrooms, etc. It's a self-contained unit. And most of these units have no windows at all.
8 of these units form a "house", with a large common area and real windows, as you see. But it's a space shared by 56 people, and their guests. Calling it private is rather stretching that term.
From the floor plan linked elsewhere in this thread, I count ten stairwells spaced around the perimeter of the building, which would imply a ratio of about 450 residents per stairwell.
Is that an acceptable number? What’s the necessary throughput of a stairwell for an evacuation? I have certainly lived and worked in buildings where the number of people per stairwell was far higher.
I would rather live here than any of my dorms from college. It’s not like you will spend all, or even most, of your time in the room, especially with the nice shared facilities in the same building. Plus all the other options and opportunities on a college campus.
The complainers are only considering an imaginary ideal alternative, not realistic trade offs.
I'd challenge you to board up the windows in your room so that absolutely no light gets in. just do it for 5 days. you'll find waking up without natural light is an awful experience.
I stayed in a room without a window for a week a few years ago. I wouldn't recommend it.
if the trade off is that I can't afford alternative housing I'm finding housing in a turn that I need to commute from. I went to ucsb and knew a few people who commuted from Ventura which is 45min away and much cheaper than Santa Barbara.
Agreed. However, if you're building something as massive as this you likely want to appeal to a broad market. I could be wrong but I suspect that most people would prefer having a window in their bedroom as opposed to not having one.
I love natural light and get as much as I can when I'm awake, but it's not required in my bedroom, especially if alternative options are a long commute, sharing a room with a stranger, or going deeper into debt. To me it's crazy that you would choose a 45 minute commute over a small and/or windowless room in college, but I understand people have different priorities; I'm sure there will be at least 4,500 students that will appreciate and choose the option to live alone, cheaper, and have the other amenities in exchange for a window. There's no need for outraged outsiders to pre-make that decision for them.
And, incidentally, I don’t need to accept the challenge to block my windows. I already have blackout curtains that I never open because the only time I’m in my bedroom is when I'm asleep or it’s too bright/hot to open. And I can’t use the natural light to wake up since where I live sunrise varies from about 4:00 to 6:30am, which doesn't work with my schedule at all. I've considered buying an automatic curtain opener to make use of the light as an alarm, but haven't gotten around to it, so for now the curtains just stay closed.
I agree with you that we can let people decide what trade offs they value; however, there is an issue where the university could find out that this is harmful to mental health or simply that students aren't willing to make this trade off. Now you have this giant building that isn't being optimally used and it could be expensive/difficult to repurpose it.
Also, I sleep with blackout curtains too! It's a much different experience than waking up in a pitch black room.
Small slivers of light make it through the edges of the curtains and that makes a HUGE difference in my own experience. Even in the winter when it's dark in the morning is a different experience than the pure pitch black. I know what I'm describing sounds silly and ridiculous but it's hard to explain how unsettling it is to wake up in a room like that.
you're right. I think I should have clarified, waking up in a pitch black environment is the real issue, not necessarily the absence of natural light. I still think you want ambient light from outside as opposed to switching a lamp on in the inside of the room. This was my personal experience though so I could be wrong.
I feel pretty strongly that data would back up my anecdotal experience though... not willing to take the time to look it up though so i'll stay out of the conversation from now on.
> you'll find waking up without natural light is an awful experience
Isn't California trying to switch to permanent DST? In Santa Barbara that will move winter sunrise to as late as a little past 8 AM. That's going to limit how effectively a lot of people can use natural light to help wake.
No idea what CA is doing with DST. As I mentioned in another comment, I misspoke. My issue was less about waking up to natural light and more about waking up in pitch black and using artificial light in place of natural light.
In the winter I wake up before sunrise; however, there is still small slivers of ambient light out there(from the moon) that makes it through my blackout curtains which makes a world of difference.
Again, all anecdotal evidence but I'm inclined to join the rabble on this building given my personal experience.
> It’s not like you will spend all, or even most, of your time in the room
??? I spent a fairly significant amount of time in my room studying, sleeping, and doing schoolwork when I was in college. I only went out for recreation, meals, and classes. I would argue that I spent the majority of time in my bedroom at college, including sleeping.
There are people that would gladly live in a basement eating nothing but hot pockets and wear a mask even when walking down the street. Doesn't mean everyone should be willing to.
In Portugal socialists make windowless student dorm rooms and nobody complains about it. Read the pdf file of the project and let's be real. Thing looks amazing.
I can't believe people are resorting to blatant whattaboutism to defend this nonsense without getting called out on it. Depriving humans of natural light for "economic" reasons is insane. Every study we've ever done on the effects of natural light on mood, happiness, whatever have always turned out the same: it's super-important for people. I can't imagine going through the hyper-hormonal ups-and-downs of early college age without a window to stare out into while contemplating my nothingness.
This guy isn't just a "billionaire." Munger, through his involvement in Berkshire Hathaway and his law firm MTO, is the "billionaires' billionaire." This tone-deaf nonsense just shows what he thinks normal people should be grateful for accepting, as a gift from his tax write-off account... And if you think Munger is some sort of architectural genius, I look forward to your defense of "Mungerville." Because, you know, Santa Barbara is totally where you want to put a bunch of French Normandy crap:
Why do you need a window when you can go outside at any time? It's not like it's a prison. If you want a room with a window pay for a room with a window.
The fact a billionaire did something so cool means HN has to hate it because the media tells them to. It's a fucking embarrassment.
Even to the insanity that it might actually break from fire code. Because children out of high school on HN can think deeper than a team creating and checking a $200 million building across multiple organisations.
There are studies about access to windows. These generally were done pre-current lighting techniques and this is a room designed for sleeping. But if you're rich they are good else it's the same as the Navy or a lot of the developing world you can sleep without them. Except this is for kids who get to hang out in amazing communal spaces on top of having what 90% of the world does not, their own room and one assumes at an affordable price.
> You're not an architect, though, are you?
This line was done by a lot of the media. He should just say neither are you. You're just a shitty journalist with at best a shitty arts degree. Why do you get to question me?
Many people do it themselves with the help of builders and engineers. Journalist (And HN) are so crippled and out of touch it's somehow normal for them to think only architects can do this.
> The bedrooms have artificial windows instead of real ones, but they've got perfect ventilation.
Well, to be honest, I'm a bit speechless about this phrase. Way to educate the future generation that it's fine to live in small, confined, window less environments.
Could anyone please explain, why is it not possible to have windows there?
For example, if every room had a 1x1m window.
Is it because of heating issues?
I would love to see this submission title changed to replace "Billionaire" with Munger, as his networth has nothing to do with the discussion unless you're interesting in attacking Munger's character rather than his ideas.
This windowless thing is just a bunch of crazy suppositions by an ignorant man.
Wow. For the sake of its reputation, legacy and future funding from other sources, which, over time, will utterly dwarf the dollar amount of this toxic "gift" that this crank billionaire is trying to twist their arm with --
Let's all hope that UCSB comes to its sense, and cuts all ties with this bully as soon as conceivably possible.
It was truly amazing to hear him say that and follow it up with utterly trivial considerations.It's not like he has some amazing insight that no one else has, he literally has just made a decision to force a load of value judgements on exploited teenagers. The US university system is already a capricious mess, without billionaires coming in to run experiments on their students.
Seems like you are embracing the outrage narrative rather than thoughtfully examining the tradeoffs.
1 in 20 UC students are homeless and SB has an acute housing crisis [1]. They are building a dorm for 5,000 students and also need to deal with cost, zoning, etc.
Personally I would have been glad to give up a window to not share a room when I lived in the dorms. I also lived in an effectively windowless (against a brick wall) apartment in NYC, you just spend less time in your room.
It wasn't "embracing the outrage"; rather facing up to the fact that -- whatever the merits or lack thereof of his proposal -- the donor's language was intrinsically manipulative:
This windowless thing is just a bunch of crazy suppositions by an ignorant man.
At the end of the day, this just isn't the kind of person you want to sit down and do business with. No matter what dollar amount he's trying to jerk you around with.
> whatever the merits or lack thereof of his proposal -- the donor's language was intrinsically manipulative
The architect caused a media-circus because he didn't agree with a tradeoff they made and he called him ignorant. You are here also making personal attacks calling him; a "Crank", "Toxic" "Bully"...
> this just isn't the kind of person you want to sit down and do business with.
Charlie Munger would probably top "a most desired business partner" lists...
He didn't merely call him "ignorant", but "crazy". Both are ad-hominem attacks. What I don't get here is why you're trying to soft-pedal this very obvious fact.
"Crank", "Toxic" "Bully"
Accurate and justified, in light of the aforementioned unprovoked attacks.
He just thinks that because he's a billionaire, he can get away with it.
Honestly, putting aside complaints about windowless dorm rooms, my biggest complaint is that this development is not particularly cheap. By sticking so many students in one building, they had to include a ton of amenities; by including all those amenities, the cost ballooned to $1.5B, or $300k per housed student. After the $200MM grant, it's something like 260k
A mortgage calculator suggests that, unsubsidized, the price is $1146 / mo for each student. Given that it won't be full occupancy, particularly during the summer, plus add in an "HOA fee" for the building services (gym, etc) and I could see this rising to $2000 / mo per student, maybe.
Is this reasonable? Can we do better? I'm not sure. I'll bet it's appetizing compared to current prices that students pay in Santa Barbara, but I wonder if it's really the best they could do.
I think the general idea of mass housing with big communal spaces is good but cutting out windows is way too extreme.
Housing many people while providing windows and decent living conditions is a solved problem. Just look at ex Soviet-block housing. Everyone got their own modern flat while still being pretty space efficient. Sure they wont win you an architecture price and some consider them "ugly" but they are still the best option to provide decent housing for a lot of people in a very short time.
Sorry for the aside note, but the planned building with the windowless rooms is for the University of California, Santa Barbara, which - did you know - as a motto has Fiat Lux ("light be done"), which some translate as
Let there be light
The irony! (I suppose Mr. Munger would note that artificial windows are, light-wise, more flexible; some would add that this way light is effectively, literally (artificially) "done".)
What I don’t see folks mentioning is that you don’t have to get blackout blinds. It’s really optimal sleeping conditions.
As long as air quality is healthy and filtered, it would make a great place to sleep or quietly study. Meals and all other items force you out of the room into a common area, and honestly the lack of windows would motivate me to get outside and meet people, which is what you want in college. No reason to make a single dorm comfortable enough that you never have to leave or use another study space on campus.
I lived in a single one year, and the window looked into other windows, so it was closed most of the time. I might have preferred windowless if it meant I could get black out sleeping conditions.
The two entry ways are also good for bumping into people / making conversation. It’s good for socialization, which is important.
COVID makes all of this very weird, and isolating in place due to COVID exposure in a windowless pod with 7 other people and two shared bathrooms and no natural light for 2 weeks would be awful.
After the initial disgust, I don't have a problem with this. (I do with the pricetag, 300k per single occupancy?!?!?)
This is like paying less for a middle seat on an airplane. Somewhat uncomfortable to save money. For the love of God this better be cheaper for the students though, or else, absolutely not. There are plenty of other schools that aren't as sexy where students should feel welcome, and are not due to a variety of issues.
…
Imagine my surprise, nay, my consternation, when without moving from his privacy, Bartleby in a singularly mild, firm voice, replied, “I would prefer not to.”
I sat awhile in perfect silence, rallying my stunned faculties. Immediately it occurred to me that my ears had deceived me, or Bartleby had entirely misunderstood my meaning. I repeated my request in the clearest tone I could assume. But in quite as clear a one came the previous reply, “I would prefer not to.”
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