Comment by lcuff | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lcuff | Hacker News Reader

One of the things that I'm betting is true here is that most of us don't have any _detailed_ information about the building. Charlie Munger says: I never allow myself to have an opinion on anything that I don't know the other side's argument better than they do.” Whether he always adheres to this or not, I don't know, but as someone who has become one of the wealthiest men in the world, I have to believe he has excellent judgement.

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.

Plenty of 2D and 3D drawings have been posted. Extrapolating from (and distilling to) these sorts of representations in order to understand built spaces is the core competency of architects.

Well, seeing how the building is going to be when built, and knowing the reasoning for the design is two different things, yes? He may have given an interview, but this is hardly a full explication of the reasoning behind the decisions. We have to know the reasoning before we can agree or disagree with it. It's not as if this is some "oops, I hadn't thought about the lack of windows."

He’s explained plenty in the interview and other news reports.

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!

"In-depth" interviews and news reports seldom even scratch the surface of complex subjects. Thinking that a man who has spent years working with architecture, even if he's not a licensed architect, can explain his rationale in such a short span is, frankly, laughable.

> Monastics live in windowless rooms

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.

I've stayed in a couple in the U.S. that had no windows, both built in the modern era, which perhaps accounts for the difference. Both with Jesuit roots.

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