Windowless dorms, crazy 97 year old billionaire amateur architect and a bunch of corrupt university staff and committee members who would do anything to save a few bucks. What could go wrong? Humanity at its finest.
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Comments that consist only of denunciatory rhetoric and add no information are the opposite of what we're hoping for here. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. The idea is: if you have a substantive point, make it thoughtfully; if not, please don't comment until you do.
Just in case anyone is worried, I have no opinion about the building or any of the people involved. Moderation like this is purely concerned with comment quality on HN.
Plus, everyone gets a single!
My college roommates had blackout curtains on the small windows in our rooms. Not sure how this is different.
But there's zero evidence this building will actually accomplish this. And, according to the architect who resigned, plenty of evidence to the contrary.
Achievement: kids lying on their beds doomscrolling because the common space in the room is dominated by a massive table with exactly enough room for everybody to bump elbows.
https://nymag.com/strategist/article/best-sad-lamps.html
https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/light-therapy/ab...
> My college roommates had blackout curtains on the small windows in our rooms. Not sure how this is different.
You and your college roommates had a choice. Did everybody in your dorm do that?
It sounds like an experiment but it could probably have been done slightly further "away from home" if it was about collaboration. Just have places to encourage people to hang out if they want to and not if they don't. Forcing them just feels like mental breakdown waiting-to-happen.
It's hubris that on one hand HN can bitch about how egomaniacal companies like Facebook and Google are, and yet on the other complain about how architecture designed to promote socialization is unfair.
Where do we think those social-deaf, micro-optimizing engineers come from?
But one way or another, an architect is going to design things in a way that (they think) optimizes for certain behaviors and use whether that's socializing/collaborating or the maximum privacy/anonymity.
College kids living in dorms are turning inward? Do you have proof of that or that is just a hunch?
> ... yet on the other complain about how architecture designed to promote socialization is unfair.
The goal of making architecture promote socialisation is great. The complaint is not about the aim. The complaint is about how it is achieved.
Bedrooms with no natural light or natural air circulation suck. We don't build houses like this because it is not a good idea. Saying that your aim was to promote socialisation doesn't change that.
In an environment that respects human persons and their individuality as well as their social nature, the environment is structured according to subsidiarian principles. The town square is where anyone can socialize with anyone in town. Next the building courtyard is where anyone in the building can socialize with anyone else in the building. Next, the living room or common area of an apartment is where anyone can socialize with anyone in the apartment (analogously for single family homes). Individual bedrooms are for total privacy. I don't need to be coerced out of my bedroom if that's where I need to be because some crazy billionaire high on his own flatulence says so.
Be very wary of so-called "philanthropists". They are in love with their power to control and coerce, not the actual good.
To quote C. S. Lewis:
"My contention is that good men (not bad men) consistently acting upon that position [imposing “the good”] would act as cruelly and unjustly as the greatest tyrants. They might in some respects act even worse. Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under of robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some points be satiated; but those who torment us for their own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to heaven yet at the same time likely to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on the level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals."
Your room is for sleep, and possibly study, though there are other places on campus with fewer distractions. You can choose to eat and work together in groups in your dining room. You socialize away from your suite so you don't annoy your roommates.
The dorms that I used had all sorts of unpleasant features:
-- giant shared bathrooms had gang showers, or required you go go down 2 flights of stairs and along a hallway for 100 yards -- shared larger rooms with multiple beds and desks, creating issues around differing schedules -- no kitchens or cooking facilities -- no food storage facilities, creating unsanitary conditions
etc.
As an example, a fairly common layout that I've seen is a 3-room quad -- two very small rooms with two bunk beds, two dressers and maybe a close adjoining a not particularly large 'common' room with 4 desks, perhaps a mini-fridge, and a beat-up couch.
Munger's vision is a palace compared to this.
Just because you had a poor dorm experience doesn't mean a brand new dorm built in 2021 needs to replicate that experience.
The vast majority of students? I don't think I knew a single person who lived without roommates when I was a university student. Freshman year nearly everybody shared a room with 1-2 other people, this new dorm would provide far more privacy than that.
I'm extremely confused. Were your blackout curtains made of sheet metal and welded to the walls?
The big thing was that I had a common room shared with my suite-mates which was large-ish, comfortable, and naturally lit. I spent my time at home there, but it's college so I spent most of my time out of the dorm anyway.
My big concern with this UCSB dorm would be for students who are significantly asocial. For the many who crave an isolated personal space, it could be majorly depressing. I get the idea that the entire goal of the design is to try to get people to not behave that way, but I doubt that will work.
I'd guess this dorm would be a great experience for a very significant majority of students, but basically a torture chamber for an unfortunate minority. Ergo it's probably an extremely bad idea.
I think one of the most bizarre things we accept in life is college kids being forced into doubles and triples. College "kids" are adults, not little kids in camp.
Plus, even with my window in my single suite room, my sleep cycle was so messed up half the time due to the occasional all-nighter that having no window might have actually been easier for me to deal with.
I went to uni. in the 70s in the UK. I never had to share. A few students at the same uni. did but it was almost always possible to move to a single room later in the year.
Do so many US students really have to share rooms, and if so why?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Munger
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Munger#Architectural_e...
If they already own the building, it is only construction costs whereas buying an apartment is possibly extortionate land or property prices from the current owner, which is purely demand-driven.
In addition to the window thing, the sheer scale of 4,500 students gives me pause. It's something like 10x the number of students of any dorm I've ever experienced.
For example, if I designed a cell phone that wasn't waterproof, I would feel a tremendous sense of personal shame as an engineer.
If I took a campaign contribution and voted against the people I my district, I would feel a tremendous sense of personal shame as an elected official.
And so on and so forth. This lack of transparency, accountability, critical thinking, personal responsibility, professionalism, etc has given us this bizarro world 21st century reality where one rich guy can soil the lives of countless others in a seemingly impeccable way. To name one undesired outcome of this local optimum in the multiverse of possible realities..
Edit: $200 million is nothing to sneeze at, so nothing against Charlie Munger for that. I do wish though that philanthropists would donate without strings attached, or else it ends up being an extension of their egos.