Current Events > Billionaire proposes 4,500 student dorm, 94% of whom wouldn't have windows

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https://www.independent.com/2021/10/28/architect-resigns-in-protest-over-ucsb-mega-dorm/

A consulting architect on UCSBs Design Review Committee has quit his post in protest over the universitys proposed Munger Hall project, calling the massive, mostly-windowless dormitory plan unsupportable from my perspective as an architect, a parent, and a human being.

In his October 25 resignation letter to UCSB Campus Architect Julie Hendricks, Dennis McFadden a well-respected Southern California architect with 15 years on the committee goes scorched earth on the radical new building concept, which calls for 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.

The idea was conceived by 97-year-old billionaire-investor turned amateur-architect Charles Munger, who donated $200 million toward the project with the condition that his blueprints be followed exactly. Munger maintains the small living quarters would coax residents out of their rooms and into larger common areas, where they could interact and collaborate. He also argues the off-site prefabrication of standardized building elements the nine residential levels feature identical floor plans would save on cost. The entire proposal, which comes as UCSB desperately attempts to add to its overstretched housing stock, is budgeted somewhere in the range of $1.5 billion.

McFadden disagreed sharply with what the university has described as Charlies Vision for the benefits of a close-knit living experience. An ample body of documented evidence shows that interior environments with access to natural light, air, and views to nature improve both the physical and mental wellbeing of occupants, he wrote. The Munger Hall design ignores this evidence and seems to take the position that it doesnt matter.

So far, McFadden continued, the university has not offered any research or data to justify the unprecedented departure from normal student housing standards, historical trends, and basic sustainability principles. Rather, he said, as the vision of a single donor, the building is a social and psychological experiment with an unknown impact on the lives and personal development of the undergraduates the university serves.

McFadden explains he felt compelled to step down from from the Design Review Committee (DRC) after it became clear during an October 5 presentation that the dorms plans were already set in stone. The design was described as 100% complete, approval was not requested, no vote was taken, and no further submittals are intended or required, he said. Yet in the nearly fifteen years I served as a consulting architect to the DRC, no project was brought before the committee that is larger, more transformational, and potentially more destructive to the campus as a place than Munger Hall. This kind of outlandish proposal is why the committee exists, he said.

McFadden draws striking comparisons between Munger Hall and other large structures to illustrate its colossal footprint. Currently, he said, the largest single dormitory in the world is Bancroft Hall at the U.S. Naval Academy, which houses 4,000 students and is composed of multiple wings wrapped around numerous courtyards with over 25 entrances.

Munger Hall, in comparison, is a single block housing 4,500 students with two entrances, McFadden said, and would qualify as the eighth densest neighborhood on the planet, falling just short of Dhaka, Bangladesh. It would be able to house Princeton Universitys entire undergraduate population, or all five Claremont Colleges. The project is essentially the student life portion of a mid-sized university campus in a box, he said.

The project is utterly detached from its physical setting, McFadden goes on, and has no relationship to UCSBs spectacular coastal location. It is also out of place with the scale and texture of the rest of campus, he said, an alien world parked at the corner of the campus, not an integrally related extension of it. Even the rooftop courtyard looks inward and may as well be on the ground in the desert as on the eleventh floor on the coast of California, he said.

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That's good for the environment though, right?

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The great thing about a world where pirates just sort of take all the wealth is that when they on a whim decide to become an amateur-whatever they get to decide how the world operates instead of the experts who dedicated their lives to the given area of study.

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Supposed to be a test, obviously.


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This is pure evil

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Windowless dorm? Sounds like that criminal-filled house I made in Sims 3.

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Besides the no window thing and the fact they seem to think 2 exits is good for a building that houses 4500 students....

The apartments actually don't look that bad. There's some pics in the article. Although it looks like there might be one bathroom per grouping and that's kind of low. Edit: there might be 2 bathrooms per.... but still.

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Antifar posted...

Munger maintains the small living quarters would coax residents out of their rooms and into larger common areas, where they could interact and collaborate.

I mean I can see where this could be viewed as a positive thing but sometimes people just wanna mind their own damn business without feeling like they're living in a closet

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This is the future.

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It's fucking cruel to have all those rooms without windows. Also, only 2 entrances? Sounds perfect for a worst case scenario in a mass shooting.

Also, with how densely populated it will be, there's going to be so many issues and that'll lead to mass groups of people getting forced out at once because of a fire alarm or whatever. It's beyond counterproductive.

This is why we don't let rich people decide this stuff, we have experts and an entire field of study that's built around this for a reason.

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littlebro07 posted...

I mean I can see where this could be viewed as a positive thing but sometimes people just wanna mind their own damn business without feeling like they're living in a closet

I mean yeah that makes sense, but it's a dorm. Dorms aren't known for their ample living area. I'd be curious to see a SF per student measurement in regular dorms versus this one.

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Antifar posted...

is a single block housing 4,500 students with two entrances

He is going to get thousands of people killed in a fire

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Shotgunnova posted...

Windowless dorm? Sounds like that criminal-filled house I made in Sims 3.

A prison, you mean?

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Shablagoo posted...

The great thing about a world where pirates just sort of take all the wealth is that when they on a whim decide to become an amateur-whatever they get to decide how the world operates instead of the experts who dedicated their lives to the given area of study.

Hey, now, these aren't pirates. These are warlords. Pirates actually have to do work.

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littlebro07 posted...

I mean I can see where this could be viewed as a positive thing but sometimes people just wanna mind their own damn business without feeling like they're living in a closet

Yeah I'm pretty uncomfortable with idea that residents should be forced to interact with each other by making their living spaces unpleasant to be in

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I stayed at a hotel room in singapore without any windows. Pretty jarring at first imo

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I dont have any particular issue with the rooms being relatively small and windowless, though having a window would obviously be preferred, but only having two exits for so many residents seems like a very poor design choice.

What I'm wondering is who are the 6% that get windows?

Yeah, that sounds exactly like the kind of building a 97 year old billionaire named Charles Munger would design.

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A prototype of the sci-fi idea for a super highrise mega population center?

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Esrac posted...

I dont have any particular issue with the rooms being relatively small and windowless, though having a window would obviously be preferred, but only having two exits for so many residents seems like a very poor design choice.

What I'm wondering is who are the 6% that get windows?

It's probably more like 5.7% and they just rounded down to get 94%.

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What, are windows too expensive? This 97 year old leech needs to fuck off.

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1337toothbrush posted...

What, are windows too expensive? This 97 year old leech needs to fuck off.

Structural weaknesses.

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This is evil type shit, but Im surprised it wasnt Jeff Bezos that didnt recommended this dystopian type shit

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1337toothbrush posted...

What, are windows too expensive? This 97 year old leech needs to fuck off.

I'm assuming a lot of the rooms are interior rooms and you very well couldn't have a window in those.

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Is this the beginning of Vault-Tec?

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uwnim posted...

I'm assuming a lot of the rooms are interior rooms and you very well couldn't have a window in those.

I mean you could but it would be pretty awkward for your neighbors

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That fossil wants to build a prison

gunplagirl posted...

A prison, you mean?

Well, they had an indoor pool, so it was a little more pleasant than it looked on the outside.

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The building itself looks fine aesthetically from the outside, but the rooms? No maam!

Shotgunnova posted...

Well, they had an indoor pool, so it was a little more pleasant than it looked on the outside.

I'm guessing it's like the sims and there's no ladder to get out of the pool with?

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Shame it came from this dude. If it had been Musk recommending it this board would be all over his pipe.

We had a shitty dorm in my old college. The bathrooms were communal and the rooms really small.
It did not, in fact, create a collaborative utopia, it just made everyone inside fucking miserable. And that was with windows.

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Feline posted...

Shame it came from this dude. If it had been Musk recommending it this board would be all over his pipe.

I'm not a fan of Musk, but I doubt he would be that stupid.

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eston posted...

Yeah I'm pretty uncomfortable with idea that residents should be forced to interact with each other by making their living spaces unpleasant to be in

I went to college 10 years ago so maybe things have changed but it's never been an issue at any dorm I've lived in. If people want to interact they will do so, they don't need to be coaxed.

This just seems like it will remove any quiet spaces to study in.

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Shablagoo posted...

The great thing about a world where pirates just sort of take all the wealth is that when they on a whim decide to become an amateur-whatever they get to decide how the world operates instead of the experts who dedicated their lives to the given area of study.

I'm sure Broseph will be here to inform us that wealth inequality has no negative effect on anything whatsoever and that this is actually an instance of Communism in action.

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Yes, I'm sure students will be chomping at the bit to apply to this University after touring the dorms.

Fucking idiots.

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Alteres posted...

Supposed to be a test, obviously.

A $1,500,000,000 test?

97 year olds should not be deciding these kinds of things.

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theAteam posted...

I went to college 10 years ago so maybe things have changed but it's never been an issue at any dorm I've lived in. If people want to interact they will do so, they don't need to be coaxed.

This just seems like it will remove any quiet spaces to study in.

This, too. I could see in other environments, but socializing has never really been a college problem.

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Out of touch billionaire shouldn't be allowed to design anything.

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Strange how everything horseshoe-theories back to bland and strictly-functional brutalist architecture.

Questionmarktarius posted...

Strange how everything horseshoe-theories back to bland and strictly-functional brutalist architecture.

Are you trying to argue that this billionaire is left-wing?

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1337toothbrush posted...

Are you trying to argue that this billionaire is left-wing?

It all comes back to "or else!" mentality, doing things as cheaply as possible because fuck the masses.

[hyperbole]
"You live here, because the state says so"
"You live here, unless you pay extra!"
[/hyperbole]

that might not be the right hyperbole... hold on.

For the people questioning the 2 exits, I lived in a dorm that was nearly 30 stories, housed 2,200 students, and only had 3 exits - two revolving doors in the front, and one normal door in the rear. For fire alarms, we all used the single exit in the rear.

Just thought Id throw that out there. Also, we all had windows.



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Looks like the cop rooms in Squid Game

This sounds like like some distopian Judge Dredd shit

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So basically, if you don't build it to the 97 y/o Billionaire's design, he won't fund the new dorm.

That's the gist, right?

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I'm pretty sure its illegal in the Canada and possibly the states to have a bedroom without windows. I know my buddy had a perfectly usable room that he had to turn into a storage room because he wasn't allowed to rent it as a bedroom because it lacked a window.

My architect buddy says that you might need at least 4 exits minimum to barely meet Fire Code Safety regulations for a building that big.

Does anybody else get a Borg Cube vibe from the building?

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