Interview with Charlie Munger on Controversial UCSB Dorm
architecturalrecord.com
architecturalrecord.com
1. The whole project is expected to cost $1.5 billion. Does that strike anyone else as insane? That's like 330k per room, and these rooms are really tiny with no windows. I get the point is to have tons of more inviting common spaces, but 1.5 billion just seems nuts to me. Especially since Munger decreed much of the building will be assembled off site in "pods".
2. All the beds are at the back of the room, essentially "walled in" on 3 sides. I'm too tall for a normal twin or full size mattress, which is what these images look like. Normally that's not much of an issue because I let my feet hang off the bed. I would feel super squished in this bed.
You know, a problem that doesn't apply to billion dollar construction.
In my experience, contractors who do not want your job will not come out to give bids.
It has been my experience that charging 5x the usual amount for a job you don't want to do is something many contractoes do.
It is expensive but Room & Board is 16.5k for 9 months at UCSB, so it will break even in 30 years or so depending how you model it.
"Huge Portion"... not really its about 2k each semester for food.
Building location: https://goo.gl/maps/f2SxAxgajfFotQ8K8
The rooms are 10x7 so these beds would need to be twin longs like (all?) US dorms.
As someone who lives in California, not really, no.
The room is $70k, the shared space in the module per room is about $70k. The other $90k is convertible classrooms, a Costco, etc which would normally be entirely separate building projects.
Some quotes of his:
> “You’ve got to get used to the fact that billionaires aren’t the most popular people in our society,” he told MarketWatch. “I’d rather be a billionaire and not be loved by everybody than not have any money.”
I honestly struggle to understand what he means by this, but I have a hunch it's not good.
> “Everybody loves light and everybody prefers natural light. But it’s a game of tradeoffs,” Munger said in an interview. “If you build a big square building, everything is conveniently near to everybody in the building. If you maximize the light, you get fewer people in the building.”
Ahh, the maximal packing version of architecture.
> “What I learned was how stupid I was. Imagine taking years to decide that the kids should get their own bedroom.”
Plenty of designs allow students their own room. The fact that he considers this a design leap is problematic.
> “If this building fails, it will be the first Munger building that fails."
No introspection.
I think what is the sickest thing is the UCSB Chancellor's comment:
> UCSB Chancellor Henry T. Yang has called Munger’s proposal an “inspired and revolutionary” design that will offer “an unprecedented residential experience.”
What a sycophant.
I believe the architect, who resigned and wrote the letter he’s reacting to, suggested this as a compromise for getting every room a window.
If you go for a traditional design that isn't trying to force students into mixed spaces that are inside the same floor, but instead placing these mixed spaces inside different floors or different buildings, you can have every room in the same building.
> I honestly struggle to understand what he means by this, but I have a hunch it's not good.
I think it's pretty clear. He doesn't give a rat's ass about what people think of him, he has enough money for him not to care. Good for him, I guess. The problem begins when these sociopaths try to impose their views on other people, and esp. if they want to "help".
We should not encourage them with tax deductions or other incentives.
Taxes good, charity bad.
The people who are so negative about this are completely unrealistic. UCSB is putting students in off-campus hotels right now. There is an incredible housing shortage. Munger is taking a very tangible step to fix it. Some students there live in their cars (plenty of windows, I suppose) Give me a break.
Sure, tangible steps are nice. Even hobbyist billionaire architects are capable of taking tangible steps because it's quite a low bar to clear.
I do find it a bit ridiculous that you call any opposition to the plan "unrealistic", as though Munger is the only architect in the world who can save UCSB from its housing problem.
Also, they truly exhausted all other options?
He could just donate the money without trying to micromanage the project. That would help fix the housing shortage just as well.
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-the-tuesd...
Some quotes:
What would you say to [Denis McFadden] if you had the chance?
Well, if he knew more about it, he would have had more correct conclusions.
What else does he have to know, in your view?
The reason this building is the way it is, is because there are enormous advantages in having a lot of undergraduates conveniently near one another and conveniently near everything else they like to be near.
The logical way to do that is to make a building in a big footprint and devote the top floor of it — which is a penthouse floor normally given to rich people, you know, for condos — and give that to the students as their common space, and to put a certain amount of academic space into that gigantic top floor with all the light and air and so forth.
And so it's just that it was so novel, he's never seen that done, and he doesn't like it when it's different from what he's used to.
Are there other student dorms where the top floor is given to rich people for penthouse condos?
In this case it would be instead of having premium student dorms on the top floor for wealthier students, or rooms for the student dorm administrators, instead every student gets access to that penthouse common space.
I've never seen any dorms with "premium" student housing, let alone mixed in the building. There are certainly (especially older) dorms with more desirable rooms, but they were never "premium" or unavailable to any student.
New York City for various reasons has some of the highest construction costs in the world. Residential high-rise construction costs are estimated at $562/sq ft [2]. Obviously there is variance in building costs based on the quality of finishings, ceiling height, facilities, etc. I guarantee you, you'd prefer to live in a modern residential high-rise pretty much anywhere in the country rather than in these windowless cells (sorry, "rooms").
Why is this so high? Doesn't UCSB already own the land so this isn't a factor?
There are a ton of problems with this building. I mean windowless is fine until the AC fails or is inadequate or there's just a power failure.
These are I believe arranged in suites of 10 that are "private" with some common facilities. 10 is rather high. I know people who had a similar arrangement with groups as small as 4 and it was a problem.
This just strikes me as pure ego from someone who is never told "no" who wants to enforce his view on the world so that even more sycophants can tell him how amazing he is. And then there's the university that doesn't care about anything other than the donation check clearing.
Student housing simply shouldn't be this way.
[1]: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/uc-santa-barbara-mega-dorm-mung...
[2]: https://www.constructiondive.com/news/construction-costs-in-....
I couldn't find the actual square footage but it did say that it is 14 stories and there is a 17000 sq ft retail/commercial space. So using that as a _very_ rough estimate, the total estimate is 238,000 sq ft, which comes out to $1260/sq ft to build.
Due to earthquakes, building in California should be more expensive than New York. I dont have any numbers to back that up though.
https://www.berkeleyside.org/2021/07/07/berkeley-new-dorm-he...
1. joining any one of the other 99.9% of companies where the CEO is not a sun worshipper?
2. if (1) not an option, using blinds?
Someone going on a rant about how miserable they were about having too much sunlight, while at the same time being incapable of applying incredibly common trivial solutions to solve this calamity - I found this quite silly and it made me a bit upset.
blinds also don't produce the sort of light I want to work with. My preference would be no natural light, and only indirect diffused lighting for general illumination and point lights where I'm working with my hands.
As a counterpoint, I worked at a company where the engineering manager thought all engineers wanted to work I dark caves, so that’s what we got.
Except most adults don’t want to work in dark caves so a lot of us ended up working from the common spaces to be exposed to some natural light. Eventually we ended up working from home because there was no way I could last in a dark cave every single day.
> When I was in college, I would have killed for a simple room where I could close and lock the door and have no external light pollution.
Blocking out light is easy. Put up curtains or a sheet.
But you can’t go the other way. There’s no way to add natural light, exterior views, and opportunity for fresh air after the building has been constructed.
With windows, everyone can choose. Without windows, there is no choice.
That's how my freshman dorm was. Moving exterior to interior it was bedrooms, study space, and then a shared living room. The result was windows in the bedroom, where they were mostly covered with blinds, and no windows in the living area.
That's the wrong compromise. You want the light in the living areas where people are spending their days. Of all the different trade offs windowless bedrooms is 100% the right call.
Or maybe you just make the floorplates smaller to increase the ratio of exterior walls to floor area like most residential buildings.
So add courtyards. Or build an E shaped building. Or build multiple smaller buildings.
You know, the things we do for other large institutional buildings like hospitals and dorms.
It's not perfect, but it's enough for this job, and I would take it in a heartbeat over a lot of the options that were available at the university I went to.
This design is asking you to walk out of your room if you want sunlight. It's not ideal. Some students would rather not. They're doing sardine-packing here as a matter of necessity and there's going to be some tradeoffs, but frankly this is a pretty minor one.
I honestly don't understand this. It's not like this is a new problem. There are plenty of ways to pack a building and still give each room a window - a famous example being the Pentagon building. The view way not be particularly nice, but at least it would give you fresh air and a sense of time and space.
He said has has copied architecture patterns from cruise ships. Of course you can't design a ship with courtyards, so windowless cabins sort of make sense there. But he is not building a cruise ship.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oasis_of_the_Seas
Almost 3000 rooms, but easily could have been more as all the cabins are bigger than in Munger Hall. Total pricetag is about the same at $1.4B. Does UCSB have a pier? Hmm...
I found this: https://www.cruisecritic.co.uk/articles.cfm?ID=668&stay=1&po...
In my best working arrangements, we all had our own offices, but would often collaborate and invite people into pair-program (and spacious with big windows). I've worked both in single offices, shared workspaces, and cubicle farms. I would sacrifice a lot for privacy and solitude.
Not an American, so maybe I missed some cultural thing here - but what does one have to do with the other? Single-occupancy bedrooms with windows seem to be the standard in many European countries at least.
If I'm a basement dweller because I want to have a place (even a very small one) where I have some semblance of privacy, then I guess it is what it is.
https://www.studierendenwerk-bonn.de/wohnen/unsere-wohnheime...
575 single-occupancy rooms with individual bathroom, kitchen and window(!) in two buildings with a total footprint of ~9600m². Seems pretty packed to me.
Incredible. This is the language of someone who has been surrounded by yes-men for so long that they’ve completely lost touch with how to be persuasive.
He can’t understand how anyone would disagree with his windowless dorm proposal because everyone in his near orbit has showered the idea with praise.
He has done so by maintaining an absolutely-no-fucks-given-get-straight-to-the-goddamn-point attitude.
https://www.veryapt.com/ApartmentReview-a7222-munger-graduat...
and, for myself an essential differentiator, the University of Michigan's are for older grad students.
The top review is titled “No windows, no way”. The second review says it was great until COVID hit and they had to actually spend time in the windowless rooms.
Most of the positives seem to be about things like location and convenient access to other things, which has nothing to do with the architecture. The architecture is listed as the downside.
It would also be more expensive and have fewer rooms. In all likelihood, that would result in multiple people per room. All that makes the result unclear.
The proposed building looks like a Borg Cube (maybe that's why architects don't like it?), but that's only possible because most bedrooms are not on exterior walls. Instead, each bedroom is part of a suite that opens to a common area that does have a real window!
If you take a look at the footprint of residential buildings, you'll notice that they are almost never square. In fact, they have a fairly high aspect ratio.
In the case of Santa Barbara, the major constraint is land. If you wanted to house the same number of students, you'd either need to make the building 2-3x taller or use 2-3x as much land. Otherwise the buildings would be so close that the real windows would get no natural light (but, hey, at least you'd have a real window).
The issue is not the aspect ratio. The issue is that Charlie is obsessed with having every room connected to a common space which is the one with natural light. It would be trivial to have a slightly higher aspect ratio, maybe one or two more floors, and have the common areas in the center.
Apparently the original article included only 1/8th of the building's floor plan. Another commenter linked me this floor plan: https://www.dezeen.com/2021/11/02/architect-resigns-grotesqu...
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.
Seems to me that HN users in this thread and UCS students aren't able to look past those tradeoffs.
As a student, I'm perfectly happy to have my own room with no windows. This is because (at least pre-covid when the facility was built), there's tons of stuff to do on campus and I won't be in my dorm room all that much anyway. The location is amazing. Even as an antisocial person, you get your own private space, which is something that many dorms don't provide on a budget. Yeah the lack of windows sucks, but I can live with it if it means I get my own private space and easy fast access to all the other things I need.
It seems like HN users (and architects) aren't even considering that those tradeoffs exist. It's like they want to design a building without any regard to land use, cost or how many students it serves.
I see no acknowledgement that:
1. UCSB is located on a narrow coastal plain, where land is at a premium.
2. Giving every bedroom a window implies blowing up the surface area/volume ratio of the building (so build it taller or build 2x or 3x as many buildings).
3. A bunch of long, skinny buildings requires more land (and probably more $) to house the same number of students as one borg cube.
Additionally, much of the criticism fails to acknowledge the actual design of the building.
Yes, each bedroom does not have a real window, but bedrooms are grouped into suites of 8, with a study area, kitchen and bathrooms... and that common space does have real windows!. An additional common area on each floor, shared among 8 suites, spanning the width of the building, has a wall covered with real windows!.
I agree that the borg cube is ugly, but I'd like to see the proposed alternative. The alternative needs to house the same number of students on the same amount of land and cost roughly the same amount. I don't think you can do the first two without building something 35 stories tall (more than twice the height of Storke Tower). And then you'll get the predictable comments about the "Manhattanization" of SB.
https://images.app.goo.gl/9s77YAvZXuEwEYaM6
This is the floorplan I could find. Where are the windows on the suites of house 4?
> The alternative needs to house the same number of students on the same amount of land and cost roughly the same amount.
Why? Did god gave us the number of students this university must accept? Sometimes the correct answer is that the question is wrong.
I stand corrected! I was going by the floorplan on the original article, which apparently didn't show the full building. You'd think that someone trying to make the point that it's a bad design would show the parts of the design that are actually bad.
> Why? Did god gave us the number of students this university must accept? Sometimes the correct answer is that the question is wrong.
Sure, that's a fair point, but then the problem isn't the building or its patron, so the criticism is misplaced.
https://detroit.cbslocal.com/2021/11/03/heres-what-its-like-...
I'm going to trust actual people quoted over an anonymous out-of-five rating site as being accurate and representative.
I'm not sure how I would respond if I were considering living in a windowless room for a bit less than a year. I think I might not like the idea, but I probably wouldn't make the lack of a window the only consideration.
[1]https://www.mlive.com/resizer/er_cS_IEhTFMCZrSWuLnRZtwMEc=/8...
As an adult, I adore windows. As a teenager and young adult, I wanted to sleep in after drinking too much or pulling an all nighter. (I passed this to a friend, an architect in Arizona. They think Munger’s spot on.)
It’s not a windowless building. It’s a building with windowless units. If someone really wants a window, they can get one. (Also, it’s UCSB. Most students move off campus after freshman year.)
Manzanita and Barrett. The latter, new. (And everyone had hacked the air conditioner controls to override the limiter on week one.) Still had foil. It’s hot and bright and even with dark skin I was frequently sunburned.
Most windows end up with coverings because it gives easy optionality.
Close the shades when you want it dark. Open them when you don’t.
Removing windows gives zero optionality.
“It’s okay actually because he always talks like this” is one of the weirdest arguments in this thread.
Why can’t we call out bad behavior just because it comes from a specific person?Bad behavior is bad behavior. Being consistent about being bad doesn’t make it good. I don’t understand why anything thinks this is okay just because it comes from a specific personality.
> If you think he has "been surrounded by yes-men for so long", I have some news for you. He doesn't manage anyone.
He’s dangling $1.2 billion dollars in front of people to get them to do his bidding with this construction. I really don’t understand how you think that’s less of an incentive than giving someone a paycheck a fraction of that magnitude.
His way of saying "You'd better be nice to me"?
https://www.pacbiztimes.com/2021/11/02/ucsb-says-its-stickin...
This and more recent articles mention the 200M out of 1.2B.
If he did invest in yes men, he would be broke, because they say yes all the time.
We need more of that.
> Munger said he based the dorm’s design on the Unité d'Habitation in Marseille by Le Corbusier. [0]
> Given that the concrete housing block [Unité d'Habitation] in question has also been known as ‘La Maison du Fada’, or the ‘House of the Crazy’, by local people and even residents with a sense of humour,[1]
> During the long phone interview, Munger said that with a large brood of children and grandchildren, he is “intimately familiar with university housing.” [0]
Local Nonagenarian billionaire, raised through the great depression, serving in World War II, somehow still allowed to make decisions concerning others. Whole world shocked.
[0] https://www.architecturalrecord.com/articles/15378-exclusive...
[1] https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20130423-design-icon-or-...
And in typical LeCorb style: it’s a top-down design for little people who have no souls, to live like the people in charge think they ought. Personal space is unimportant; privacy is an afterthought, because your life is not important except as part of a unified collective, which we, the elites, will manage to our own ends.
Glorified common areas — dark and puny individual cells.
Not necessarily. You are confusing social graces with rationality; rationality is optimized pursuit of one's own utility, not politeness.
Munger is an asshole, but that's not something that's happened over time - he's always been like that, there's the entire BRKB shareholders meeting records as tangible proof.
yes
Although, yes, that «Everybody who sees the models goes ape-shit for them» sounds a bit odd, off expected statistics.
Also, the outrage here happened to go viral, which makes the discussion turn stupid.
https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/greater-la/van-life-street-m...
It's a loss even on those terms.
This dorm would be all singles, and would eliminate the need for any triples campus-wide. Introverts would be able to choose to either live here and get a single, or go for any of the other existing housing options on campus.
So just to recap: The rooms neither give you a sense where you are in the building, nor any sense of time of day.
You wake up and literally are unable to tell if it's day or night.
As for windowless rooms: Monastics live in windowless rooms. Teenagers sometimes prefer shutting out all natural light. Most of the work environments I worked in for 40 years didn't have windows where I could look out. Everybody that lives in this dorm will have some level of choice as to whether to be there or not. The building is not windowless, it has (many) windowless rooms. Part of the tradeoff is that each student gets a room of their own. Sharing a space with someone you don't like sucks, I can say from my own experience.
Quite intentionally plopping this fatuous, self-gratifying excrescence onto the UCSB campus to a laughtrack of joyous encouragement from the panic-desperate “leadership” of a public-yet-autonomous “institution”.
Viva Pruitt-Igoe!
I have visited dozens of european monasteries – I can't remember ever seeing a windowless cell or a dormitorium. Even anchorites’ cells have windows.
Which makes sense given the medieval times: available light sources are candles and outside light. But also monastic life was focused on the Liturgy of the Hours which as the name says takes place on determined hours – and since it was late antiquity/early middle ages these were temporal, seasonal hours, depended on daylight. If you read the Rule of St Benedict you'll find diverse chapters which try to fit the monastic schedule into the available daylight and arrange the schedule to the seasons.
But I do want to question whether it's appropriate for philanthropists to be so involved in what they fund, or whether it should still be considered philanthropy at that point.
Economists sometimes talk about the inefficiency of gift-giving. Compared with the amount expended, perhaps substantially less value will be captured by the receiver. This seems like the billionaire equivalent of giving someone a painting you did, if you're not especially renowned as an artist.
If the UC system had received an equivalent amount of funding from another source would they have chosen to spend it all on this building? Or perhaps, would some have gone to scholarships, and some to more faculty, and some to a misguided new institute for whatever? Even if they had wanted to build a dorm, had Munger not been involved, would they have preferred to go in a very different direction?
Munger gets to put his name on this thing, but it sounds like he also enjoys getting to play architect or designer but without having to compete on the merits of his skills in those fields. He gets to build a thing the way he wants, put his name on it, and put it on UC land. And if we're having a conversation about how in this specific instance it may be out of line with actual benefits to the future residents, then can we also talk about how it's maybe in general a bad idea to keep congratulating rich people for pushing their personal vanity/hobby projects onto the public and calling it benevolence?
Meanwhile, Munger has been vocal in opposition to the idea of introducing a wealth tax, or a tax on corporate stock buybacks, and has suggested that the capital gains tax is too high rather than too low. To Munger, even at a public school, private entities should decide how much to spend and how to spend it.
For example: Tietgenkollegiet. It has great shared spaces, great rooms, amazing green spaces and water features, and has bike infrastructure and public transit readily available.
Generally countries have universities of similar sizes but fewer of them.
Also no one would consider Tietgenkollegiet in any way typical Danish student housing.
I consider it is fair to mention Tietgenkollegiet since this is a discussion around dormitory/college hall architecture and quality.
Most of the dorms in Europe and the rest of the world are more similar to normal apartment buildings however unlike Charlie Munger proposal they are lower density (more space per resident in both common and personal areas) and have windows to the outside world.
I would expect _any_ proposal to improve on designs to be more livable not less; the increasing in density of dormitories, decreasing common spaces, and removal of windows is indicative of American Decline[1].
Even soviet khrushchyovka[2] from the 60s/70s _are better_ than the proposed dorms and it is something normally derided by American discourse.
> starting at $500 a month (not including electricity or heating)
That seems very close to UF/UA rent:
- https://www.housing.ufl.edu/living-options/rental-rates-2/
- https://housing.arizona.edu/home/rates-applications-policies...
Couldn't find the UCSB monthly rent but seems it would be way higher than the previous two. ( https://www.housing.ucsb.edu/current-residents/move-in/resid... )
We don't mind peeing in a windowless room because we spend so little time there. Why does he think restrooms and bedrooms are the same? Being disingenuous on this level is just being stupid.
There are more people, more competition, and things are much more expensive. He’s bringing a realistic solution given today’s capacity problems and a bias towards not wanting to share rooms.
He’s 97 with nothing to lose and it sounds like he doesn’t care about his legacy.
Honestly I think the solution is realistic and people don’t like it because they don’t want to acknowledge their quality of life is in decline when it comes to housing for themselves and their children.
I think you are right. But all the CPI data and real income data says people are much richer than 40 years ago. And as someone who has spent a lot of time digging through the methodology of these time series, I don't see any bias or obvious error that should make me suspect the government data.
Then the next step is to say "yes, a car of today is much better than a car sold in 1980, so in real terms, maybe cars are cheaper but you can't buy those cheap cars now." But if you really think about it, that's not true, either. You can still buy cheap cars, for example used cars, that will last longer as they are better built. You can still buy cheap housing, just in a different location. Remember there were no mobile phones in the 1980s, no internet, no personal computers, etc. But if you want to live like someone in the 1980s, you can do that and have more money left over than someone would have in the 1980s.
So you point me to one thing and I will show you how, with today's income, you can get it at same or better quality and have more money left over than if it was 1980. Except healthcare, you can't get the cheaper version of healthcare from the 1980s (since that would be illegal). But other than that, you really can, and you can't pin the entire difference on healthcare.
The best I can think of is a vague notion that people have lost the skills to be able to live like they did 40 years ago, possibly because being able to live like that requires some community support, and we don't have that support anymore. As one data point, take the Amish, who live like they did 200 years ago. And they are not poorer. But they make sacrifices to live like that as an entire community. If an individual tried to do it on their own, they would fail. For one thing, no one would marry them once they found out about the lack of electricity and 18th Century amenities.
But I'm not too happy with this characterization, either. It's something that still puzzles me.
This building won’t win any architectural awards. But the idea makes sense and the objections don’t stand given the 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 also weird that the bathrooms from adjacent dorm blocks aren't back-to-back so that they could easily share plumbing.
https://www.architecturalrecord.com/ext/resources/news/2021/...
They also aren't living in a windowless box. They still likely get natural light in their cubicles.
The common space should be the entire exterior wall. It should be a living room instead of a kitchen/table combo.
The proportions are off too, IMHO. The pod living spaces are too small and the great rooms too big.
He also paid for the dorm at the Stanford Law School 15 yrs back. He insisted that the single occupancy rooms for the law students will be very large. The University pushed back saying that neither Stanford, nor students who will pay larger rent, will be able to afford that. Munger said that you could cut these rooms in half later, if you so desire. His argument was that the smaller rooms would be harder to cut in half later. I suppose that’s right.
[1] https://www.architecturalrecord.com/ext/resources/news/2021/...
There are windows only on one side, and that is an extreme waste. If windows were placed on the longer sides, the "natural light" problem would have greatly diminished.
(In fact, I would also have placed windows in the bedrooms alongside the perimeter walls. Those who want the window get it, those who do not prioritize them will choose differently and maybe pay for a cheaper room.)
He also went into detail about the need for "intimacy gradient" in housing designs -- another design pattern.
Room for tradeoffs.
If you want to talk about harm reduction, he also suggested a case against high-rises with million-dollar views. Apparently above the ca 12th floor or so, occupants mental health began to suffer. Perhaps too removed from ground-level experience.
Actually taking a place of a qualified professional when you don't know shit, being infatuated and calling a professional who is showing you the mistakes you made, an idiot, makes you look like an idiot.
I wouldn't actually say that Munger is an idiot, I don't think an idiot can make that much money. Idiot no, infatuated yes.
A lot of dorms I've seen would end up with long interior hallways with bathrooms and shared spaces at the ends. While each room had a windows and an exterior wall the amenities would be far away. Some even only had common areas (kitchens etc) on the ground floor.
Rooms with immediately shared common areas make them more accessible. Multiple shared areas makes for less overcrowding at busy times of the day. Kitchen areas close by rooms also means students aren't overheating their rooms with small refrigerators to keep their beer cold.
The common rooms at the end of the hall on each floor also makes for more easily accessible non-room space to live in. So long as the dorm rooms themselves are kept single occupancy there's always a private study space available in addition to shared study spaces like in the library and wherever.
If you wanted to get a similar number of rooms in the same areal footprint but give everyone a window it seems like you'd need a central courtyard. But then the building couldn't be more than a few stories tall or the lower floors would be in constant shade except for noon a few days a year. So you'd fit fewer students in the same plot. Central common spaces with dorms lining the exterior walls would also have lower density and the large common areas would still need a bunch of interior walls for sound abatement lest the floor have a constant din of noise.
A gruff billionaire and soundbite headlines are the only thing driving this "story" in my opinion. The design looks sound and can pack a lot of people comfortably into the lot available for the building. I'm not an architect so I don't know if there's some big detail I'm missing.
Incredible move to make huge claims like this and then, presumably (he’s 97), die before you have the chance to be proven wrong.
To me it seams like Munger has offered up a nice solution given the incentives and constraints that exist in this particular case. This doesn't mean it's perfect, or that it would be best in all other scenarios - just that it's a very reasonable compromise that optimizes overall good for the students in this particular case.
Perhaps someone else, rather than criticizing, would offer up a detailed alternative, and then subject that to the scrutiny of students, faculty, environmental and zoning boards, finance, etc - and see where that gets them. My guess is not very far. It's likely that all of the "better" options folks are suggestion have already been thoroughly considered and rejected for good reasons in favor of this option.
Someone asked rem Koolhaas a while ago what his residence looks like and while he tried to dodge the question he ended up answering "a 19th century victorian apartment" seems like the same sort of ego at work here
It is very different having a two week cruise, or working 9-5 in an office, but to have a windowless room as your only private space for 3 years+ is unhealthy and unfair on a segment of the community who get very little say in their living arrangements in any case.
This is a 98 year old man who thinks he is special because he is rich, and therefore everything he turns his hand to will be the best and damn those who disagree.
They're going to have to fill those 4500 beds (about 20% of the total undergraduate enrollment of UCSB) once they're built... seems safe to assume one way or another the portion of students living on-campus will increase significantly once this dorm is built.
https://detroit.cbslocal.com/2021/11/03/heres-what-its-like-...
I just stayed in the middle of Manhattan in London Terrace, in a one bedroom apartment where the living room, bedroom, kitchen, AND bathroom ALL HAD WINDOWS. This is rare in Manhattan (and in most parts of the country), simply because architects/owners decided to cut costs.
London Terrace is an entire city block of buildings designed around a big courtyard in the middle. I learned first hand what "pre-war" means :) Pre-war means "expensive apartments that people like because nobody builds them like this anymore". (It's not perfect, and I decided not to live there, but it has many good points)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Terrace
It was one of the biggest apartment buildings in the world at the time of construction (1930's). It has 1700 apartments, and every apartment has 3 or more rooms, so it's probably bigger than the 4500-room Munger building.
You obviously sacrifice density, but I can't imagine how that's a problem in Santa Barbara vs. Manhattan! You can build higher, or you can build 2 buildings on different sites rather than 1.
It's obviously more expensive than making a big storage cube, but I would argue it's worth it. And Munger could obviously afford it. Not sure why he would put his name on such a building.
Instead of building one building with gigantic floorplates build half a dozen with smaller floorplates optimised to give each room a window. If that reduces the overall floor area just add a few more floors on top.
For a billion $ he could have built a lovely ‘academical village’ with every kind of amenity and a wide variety of rooms for every preference. This is a tenement, a warehouse for living people, in the worst 1900 Lower East Side sense, minus some of the fire and sanitation risk. Suitable for vermin, not scholars.
See also Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives, 1890.
A citizens’ movement resulted in the organization of a Board of Health and the adoption of the “Tenement-House Act” of 1867, the first step toward remedial legislation. ... The dark bedroom fell under the ban first. In that year the Board ordered the cutting of more than forty-six thousand windows in interior rooms, chiefly for ventilation—for little or no light was to be had from the dark hallways. Air-shafts were unknown. The saw had a job all that summer; by early fall nearly all the orders had been carried out. Not without opposition; obstacles were thrown in the way of the officials on the one side by the owners of the tenements, who saw in every order to repair or clean up only an item of added expense to diminish their income from the rent; on the other side by the tenants themselves, who had sunk, after a generation of unavailing protest, to the level of their surroundings, and were at last content to remain there.
I don't care for Munger. With that said, there's a huge disconnect here with your argument unless you can show a reasonable solution. There are poor people now who need housing. We can just build something subpar and help lift people out of homelessness.
For that price you can build a three bedroom condo with amenities.
This is a false dilemma. Little money is being saved here.
"Given the high construction cost everywhere, this is not surprising. I had a friend with a backyard slopping down a hill. He got some quotes to put in a deck and redo his yard. No one quoted anything less than 200k."
Both of these situations are in California. Construction costs are extremely high right now.
It's not because it would actually cost them 200 000$ in labour and material to build a deck and redo a yard.
Besides, for a billion dollar you're not dealing with local contractors, at that price you can even contract international companies, let alone bring in labour from the rest of the country.
Including the cost of land, for a full condo. It would correspond to a construction price of a condo of ~300 000$.
A dormitory room is going to cost less than a condo.
"When Los Angeles voters approved Prop. HHH in 2016, city officials predicted units would cost $350,000 to $414,000. In reality, prices have jumped to as much as $701,000 per unit, with 60 percent of the living spaces expected to exceed half a million dollars each."
You'll notice even the low end that was promoted to voters is higher than $330,000.
https://www.dailynews.com/2020/02/21/prop-hhh-projects-in-la...
This construction has to deal with NIMBYs and related delays, again UCSB doesn't have to bother with that.
And most of all these aren't single occupancy units. They are units for 2-3 people.
So yes, construction costs would be around the 350k mark when you take into account the land, for multi bedroom units, versus a single bedroom.
I dont know how to solve for rising costs. I do know that if I cannot afford something nice, I have to settle for something subpar. I'm not sure how else to deal with the issue.
I would understand if someone crunched the numbers and after a long and detailed reasoning they would have come up with this solution as the only one which can potentially work. But as far as I understand that is not what happened here. The donor has aspirations to be an architecture too and stipulated that this is the only way his money can be spent. No deviations from the plan are acceptable.
The powerful land-speculation lobby (Monoplex owners) block every attempt at this. Munger Hall is the result. If you don't like that this is being built, your quarrel is with the suburban climate arsonists who hold up every development for extensive review until it dies.
The way munger is going about it is a ridiculous amount of money, and I heavily doubt it will be built right. But the concept itself, to me, is a worthy tradeoff if it means reduced costs and better benefits. A window is not a benefit I care about.
Have you experienced being in a windowless room for a long period of time?
It’s not a luxury.
They will be living in a vibrant college community, with common areas, beaches, parks, libraries etc...
I've lived in a room with a Window against a brick wall in NYC.
I’ve been in a windowless prison cell, it sucks.
That doesn't sound pleasant but college students aren't prisoners locked in their dorm rooms.
I recall being stuck in a room for days working in winter
And FWIW I went to school in a similar climate to yours and was never "stuck in a room for days". How did you get to class? How did you get food?
Ugh, that is one of the ugliest, soul crushing building I've ever visited.
I went to see it on a trip to Marseilles, dragged there by my art major girlfriend of the time who was into Le Corbusier big time, including his furniture designs.
Much like his sofas which - while stylish - are entirely unfit for any kind of sitting on longer than a minute, Le Corbusier's buildings are the ultimate exercise in not caring for the people who will live in it.
Well there’s your problem. Le Corbusier’s designs were beautiful dystopias.
Reading through the article and the comments, I can only say it is his money and it should be a wakeup call for the college and the state of California. He has a vision of where and how he wants to spent his money and you can either accept it or not. Super rich people don't donate, they invest in social causes where their views are reflected in the long term and the goals are often not obvious. This is a very long discussion but that is how I see it.
Nothing is stopping the college to move around funds and having a tighter grip on the administrative expenses so they can invest not wisely but rather opinionatedly into projects. The mounting student debt on one side and the hypocratic song and dance to please billionaires for handouts is simply ridiculous.
Munger pays some money and he wants the building to be built in a certain way. University pays some money, and they have many direct and indirect things they want from it. Also the university is accountable to many more people than Munger.
Munger is just person with limited/no accountability and he is very exact in his demand. On the other hand, the university is accountable to the trustees and the students.
There is a value for simple and exact demands with money being handed over to someone with a goal. If you take a step back and see this entire engagement as an investment with social goals and not a billionaire donating money the nuances the whole ordeal becomes very clear.
I'd bet $1000 their HVAC system will be inadequate.
Yeah, in the "age of Covid" there are few things as stupid as sharing HVAC with 4,499 other people.
One particularly vivid memory I have is of the illegal dental offices which ringed the outside street level. These shops all had skulls in the windows with teeth showing their handiwork.
I recently went back to visit the place -- the city had been torn down, revealing the original historic garrison at the center, and it's now a lovely park. When I was there the garrison was kid of like a little quad in the middle of the City where nobody dared build: many people thought it was originally a temple (it wasn't).
If he's trying to come off as not out of touch... it's not working.
https://web.archive.org/web/20211106164904/https://www.archi...
The people in charge of the University of California system should be fired for wasting public employees’ time and taxpayers’ dollars on this weird-rich-guy-hobby idiocy. If you’re a California taxpayer, please remember that you’re going to end up double-paying for Munger’s delusion: you have to cover the tax revenue that’s lost in his “donation,” and you have to pay for the time that your public servants are spending on this mess. Oh yeah, and then you’ll pay for it over and over with the under-funded pensions collected on the time spent working on this thing...
Billionaires shouldn't have supporters between working class people I swear. It's like Stockholm syndrome on a national scale.
Dude can literally own entire countries and islands, no one should relate to him lol.
I'm not in favor of this project, and I've posted in other comments that it also feels like plutocratic insanity, but I admit I'm becoming more open to the architectural plan in general after reading additional information.
I don't believe anyone is arguing "humans don’t need natural light in their living spaces". The proposed Munger dorm actually has a lot of living spaces with natural light, it's just that these are common spaces, with the goal being that the dorm room itself is primarily just for sleeping.
Not saying one needs to agree with that thesis (I don't think I do), but one should at least argue about what the proposal actually is.
I would ask the opposite: what's the evidence that it's harmful to have a window in the living room but not the bedroom? To my knowledge most laws requiring windows in bedrooms comes from antiquated fire safety standards, not any sort of natural need to sleep close to a window.
For what it's worth I keep the blackout blinds in my bedroom closed and the blinds in my living room open. I haven't died an unnatural death yet.
For what is worth, I also wouldn't mind a windowless bedroom if it opened to a naturally lit living room, unfortunate that is not the case in this project.
https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2021/11/munger-hall-univer...
And from the fine article itself, 2nd para: only about 6 percent of the rooms — the end rooms in each row of 32 — have windows.
He is widely respected and that is well-justified.
The issue is that it is the university's administration that they are accepting those conditions. They shouldn't.
They are building something that looks dystopian, out of a Judge Dred movie. The administration should say: no thanks.
There are much better ways to deal with density without having to build such a compromised building.
The, no window in classrooms, is a very American thing. I have never seen a windowless classroom outside the US. In this case it is dorm rooms.
Also offices. Not something you see often in Europe (not impossible, maybe, but very rare).
Why is Bezos allowed to squash a tax to address homelessness? Why do Bill and Melinda gates dictate health policy for millions of people? And so on...
For example-- I was going to suggest that if Munger believed his idea is so glaringly positive, he should give nearly all of his money away and then pitch the idea. Hell, he is 97-- what does he really need to guarantee comfort in the years he has left?
But of course that's the reasoning of an outsider. If I possessed a gazillion dollars, who knows-- maybe I'd shoot it all at some bone-headed campaign to teach every citizen how to use GPG-encrypted email correctly.
Perhaps the one factor keeping most of us from achieving maximum assholery is we run out of gas before it happens.