> an 11-story, 1.68-million-square-foot structure that would house up to 4,500 students, 94 percent of whom would not have windows in their small, single-occupancy bedrooms.
> Munger maintains the small living quarters would coax residents out of their rooms and into larger common areas, where they could interact and collaborate.
> Munger maintains the small living quarters would coax residents out of their rooms and into larger common areas
Looking at the floor plan, the living quarters are not small, they are microscopic, and the common areas are not large, they are extremely small. If two people are sitting opposite at the table it becomes impossible to move past them. This is the stuff of nightmares. 4500 students packed in windowless closets sharing a room too small to breathe. People are going snap.
> Munger Hall […] is a single block housing 4,500 students with two entrances
This sounds like a novel building up to the most horrible school shooting massacre in history.
> Internal space without windows can't legally be made into residential.
Residential: Bah; Dormitory: Yay!
In brief: [Charlie Munger—billionaire vice chairman of Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway] has offered UCSB more than $200 million to build this dorm to his designs, which will cost an estimated $1.2 billion. The structure is a giant block in which almost none of the rooms have windows.
> A windowless room with a community bathroom doesn't sound appealing, but at a certain price point it's better than nothing.
Last November, HN briefly discussed [1] Munger Hall at the University of California Santa Barbara, which will be just such a building. Housing 4,500 students, only 32 of 512 single rooms on each floor will have physical windows. The remaining 95% will have virtual windows that simulate sunlight.
The HN linked article [2] includes a floor plan and a rendering of an 8-room cluster with shared kitchen, dining room, and bathrooms. UC Santa Barbara has more information on the project [3].
1.68-million-square-foot structure that would house up to 4,500 students, 94 percent of whom would not have windows in their small, single-occupancy bedrooms.
Why am I not surprised that Charles "The-most-important-thing-is-getting-your-first-100000-dollars. Work-multiple-jobs-skip-meals-do-what-you-have-to-that's-the-investing-entry-fee-to-wealth" Munger architected a large prison for students?
>Munger’s $200 million donation to the university is contingent on the structure being built to his windowless specifications.
Reason being:
>“Our design is clever,” Munger assured skeptics. “Our buildings are going to be efficient.” In addition to cutting costs and foiling potential defenestrations, his design would force students out of their sleeping cubbies and into communal spaces—with real sunlight—where, he said, they would engage with one another.
It seems to me encouraging university students to spend more time alone would be more conducive to getting work done. Overall Munger seemed to have had this notion a lot of old people have that the youth need to suffer because
of-course they suffered more.
> While the dorm rooms themselves don’t have windows, the exterior of the building does, which lets natural light into the communal living spaces.
The reasoning was too encourage people to hang out in common areas to create more of a community feeling. Whether you think that's necessary or a good idea (I went to college long ago, but there wasn't any need to have architecture diving our community), it's not the same as a dorm without windows.
> 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.
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.
I don’t get the point. From what I can see, dorms construction often costs around $70,000. Munger was advocating that we get rid of windows and put students in exceptionally tiny rooms, and the cost will be about $267,000 per student? How is this an advantage?
Interesting collision of the idea with the covid era. During an outbreak you’d want students to have a private airspace to go to and the possibility of ventilation.
Update: from another comment, Munger designed a similar building in Michigan. It has great reviews!
But, one of the top ones was “great until pandemic”. Adding this to clarify that, contra other comments, I don’t necessarily think Munger was mistaken. But events have made the idea unfortunate.
I have no idea what point you are trying to make. Normally students would be able to say that they don't want windowless dorms. In this case Munger said that if they didn't build windowless dorms they wouldn't get dorms at all. What does this have to do with architects?
> amateur architect designs for dorm rooms (basically prisons) on universities
I hope UCSB backed out of building one of these monstrosities.
"Public policy graduate student Luiza Macedo didn’t see the sun for a full week when she had to isolate in her room at Munger Residence due to a Covid-19 scare."
>tradeoffs (fewer rooms, multiple students per room and/or higher cost) they would require
You can increase the house plan from 22 windowed rooms (counting the double room twice) to 32 without changing the shape of the building by moving 4 of the dorm blocks to the other side of the multipurpose room and not having one of the washrooms face outside. That would also reduce the distance from the dorm rooms to the multipurpose room/staircase. Design's just bad.
Unrelated to the windows, it's aldo weird that the bathrooms from adjacent dorm blocks aren't back-to-back so that they could easily share plumbing.
> 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.
Students generally don't have much say over the design of their dorms.
And 80% of students who toured a demo space were positive or neutral on it.
No, Munger didn't say they would get no dorms at all if they didn't build it. He said he would not give them $200M if they didn't follow his plans. I'm not aware of his ability to unilaterally prevent the building of dorms on any campus.
What this has to do with architects is that architects don't sign off on unlivable spaces.
It is not in the same mould at all. Reposting my previous comment:
OK, I found an article with a floorplan[1]. This thing is not at all comparable to the Michigan dorms. Recall, in the Michigan dorms you have an apartment housing 7 people with a spacious, well-lit living room (6 windows, but the count isn't important.) Sure, you don't have a window in your bedroom, and that sucks, but to see the sun you just go through that one door.
But in this proposed building? Look at that insane floor plan[2]! It looks like a maze! If you're in one of those inner rooms, you exit your bedroom (no windows) into your apartment's common area (no windows), exit that to a long corridor that eventually leads to your "House's" common area, which finally has windows. But is the opposite way from the building's exit.
As you can see, the surface area problem even worse!
Each bedroom is 8x10 feet, but the building is only 87 * 4 by 200 * 2 feet. That's 1496 linear feet of exterior wall. That's only enough for 187 exterior rooms per floor, while the design calls for approximately 512 (8 rooms per suite * 8 suites per house * 8 housed per floor).
> It would be trivial to have a slightly higher aspect ratio, maybe one or two more floors
You'd need to add not just "one or two" more floors, but increase the residential part of the building from 9 floors to 24!. Even if you made very narrow (6 foot) rooms, it would still require 18 floors.
> You can make a not so tall building with a budget of 330 000$ per room
And they're paying over $1 million per bathroom! I consider this a fairly disingenuous comment because the article is clear that the building includes space for other things like convertible classrooms and rec areas.
I appreciate the architect being willing to resign in protest over what he believes is an irresponsible action that will damage the students' well-being. We need people willing to put their reputation and finances on the line when they think something is dangerous.
Personally, I'm not convinced by the argument he's making though. I'd like to see some evidence that not having a window in your sleeping quarters is psychologically damaging: I suspect it's not been uncommon in many places in the world, and throughout history.
On the other hand, I'd like to see evidence that Munger's idea, that the students will spend less time alone in their rooms and more time in a shared environment, will play out. I saw the reviews of the existing dormitory he'd built, but I don't consider that rigorous.
In general, I'd just like to see evidence once way or the other rather than knee-jerk speculation. Maybe I should get out of this thread.
> Munger maintains the small living quarters would coax residents out of their rooms and into larger common areas, where they could interact and collaborate.
That seems unlikely.
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