[0] https://www.independent.com/2021/10/28/architect-resigns-in-...
This is total conjecture but I can imagine him doing something like this: Question: how do you make students the most miserable? Answer: create a dorm that discourages social interaction, and is far from classes and amenities.
Starting from that, you do the opposite: create a large, centrally located dorm where the design discourages sitting in your room and encourages use of shared spaces while benefiting from greater density and central location.
If the question is "are windowless rooms good?" the answer is "no." If the question is "are we willing to sacrifice bedroom windows so that we have grater communal life and better walkability" the answer is probably "yes, possibly."
Logically it's the same argument for why some people prefer to live in small city apartments when they could live in a much larger home elsewhere for the same price. The very nature of city real estate is tied to the nature of city life (both as a cause as an affect) and it's simply a tradeoff. Asked on its own "do you want a cramped apartment" the answer is always "no" yet people often opt for it in context.
By whom? A suspicious site with terrible English and reviews like “you’ll get used to it” and “grat (sic) room”. If Amazon can’t keep scammy reviews away, how is some site like “veryapt” supposed to do so? It seems there is plenty of criticism of the Michigan project (even from residents)[1], but it also differs in a key point, in that all the rooms are suites, whereas the proposed project is even denser, with 8 bedrooms sharing 2 bathrooms a piece.
[1]https://www.reddit.com/r/UCSantaBarbara/comments/qkmp5h/i_wa...*
Also good reviews on google - 4.5/5 similar to the above.
To be fair, an architect with 15 years on the UCSB Review Committee resigned over this... so it's not just outsiders and the media who are bagging on the design.
https://www.independent.com/2021/10/28/architect-resigns-in-...
The designs are so different the relative success of the UM dorm shouldn't transfer much credibility to the design of the UCSB dorm. Going from sharing a lit common space with 7 people to 70 people is a massive change in the dynamics of those spaces. At a very basic level the UM space is owned and controlled by few enough people you can call it semi-private. At the UCSB level it's just a full public space which is a different dynamic.
https://detroit.cbslocal.com/2021/11/03/heres-what-its-like-...
https://i.redd.it/81yfb7wkxby51.jpg
https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2021/11/munger-hall-univer...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__cfVWiAxSU
[0] I say somewhat because people hate the windowless individual rooms it has enough amenities that they still rate it highly. He's fully banking on the fake windows making the new smaller rooms palatable. While massively increasing the number of people you have to share your nearest source of natural light with. edit: even that conclusion isn't universal some people had a pretty bad time living in those dorms https://www.reddit.com/r/UCSantaBarbara/comments/qkmp5h/i_wa...
And I would also say if you are a professional who got cut out of the process, you are gonna be pissed off no matter what.
not to say this architect is bad/wrong, just that he doesn't exactly have any incentive to celebrate this.
So yes, I agree that the UCSB dorm design sounds terrible in comparison.
Sometimes, we are stuck in a local optimum, and a new redesign is needed, which involves some tough calls and unusual solutions.
As for a bedroom without windows, when I sleep I like that my bedroom is dark. When I don't sleep, I'm not in my bed or my bedroom.
So I'm not exactly sure what people complain about his design.
My comment was responding to a call for authority. I’m not using their position for anything more than to say that they’re informed.
> When I don't sleep, I'm not in my bed or my bedroom.
I’m similar now but I was in my room a lot when I was in uni. There were also plenty of kids on my hall who were in their rooms at basically all times, leaving only for class and food.
If I may venture a guess, it may have been caused by the lack of better alternatives.
Reducing the sleeping room to its core feature (sleeping!) may give more space to build rooms for other important features, while disincentivizing staying in one room at basically all times (which I see as generally a bad idea)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt_Igoe
"Apartments clustered around small, two-family landings with tenants working to maintain and clear their common areas were often relatively successful. When corridors were shared by 20 families and staircases by hundreds, public spaces immediately fell into disrepair.[20] When the number of residents per public space rose above a certain level, none would identify with these "no man's land[s]"
One would expect that a major University building would not suffer from disrepair but the psychological effect of "disowning" the common areas might remain.
The apartments in Pruitt-Igoe were also deliberately small.
You expect a quality difference between graduate apartments and undergraduate dorms but saying one is well received (with complaints about the lack of windows and lights in the bedrooms btw) so this different design must also be secretly ok is stretching things.
[1] https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2021/11/munger-hall-univer... [2] https://i.redd.it/81yfb7wkxby51.jpg
[1]: https://www.veryapt.com/Apartments-L7646-ann-arbor-central-c...
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.
Yeah this thing is insane.
[1] https://www.dezeen.com/2021/11/02/architect-resigns-grotesqu... [2] https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2021/11/munger-hall-univer...
I think the main mistakes here are that he made the building bilaterally symmetrical and it should instead be along four quadrants. Additionally, there should be an atrium in the center providing additional windows for the middle of the building.
That many students sharing a single TV every evening is not going to work out, and if you want a 'study space' (which is psychologically healthy and strategic), you'll have to do it in the main entertainment area or leave the building.
Each 'house' at this size should have 2 public areas, and there should probably be one house at each corner, and one at each face, rather than 4 corners and 2 on the same face.
For starters the units are much smaller and each suite of rooms has it's own little semi-public area instead of being a completely windowless block like his new design. The difference between the two is vast.
https://detroit.cbslocal.com/2021/11/03/heres-what-its-like-...
I think OP has confirmation bias. Lots of armchair criticism != only armchair criticism. I've lived in plenty of buildings that don't rate a rant and yet I would never live in again. And I've had friends who've lived in worse and I was so glad when they moved so I didn't have to visit their old shithole. Are we gatekeeping complaints from visitors?
Here's a daring thought: maybe the problem isn't the windowless bedroom by itself, but the idea that it's acceptable to lock people inside their own residence, or even to forbid people to use the common areas of their own residence.
https://www.reddit.com/r/UCSantaBarbara/comments/qkmp5h/i_wa...
Works for the Navy.
Your life's circumstances can change at a moment's notice. You could fall and have a devastating brain injury. Being comfortable with your circumstances can mostly only come from within.
Young people need to be challenged with small bits of adversity from time to time to overcome instead of being coddled and incapable of dealing with real, adult problems by themselves.
I say this as someone who had to drop out of college and become homeless before really getting on my feet in my mid-20s. So many of my peers bitch and moan and live NEET lifestyles as they're pushing 40 because their parents and society promised them the world after college and they never learned that nothing is achieved without hard work.
We're talking about UCSB students here.
It's a school where wealthy, well-connected parents and administrators collude to skirt the rules to get their children admitted. It's a school where wealthy Chinese nationals send their children, because admissions is less competitive than the Chinese university admissions process and offers a better chance for their children.
It's ranked 5th out of all public universities. None of those kids are suffering and I would suggest you reevaluate what suffering is.
Given current trends, Earth is likely to be full of austere living conditions in the future. Do you want to learn how to survive now or have to scramble to figure it out when it happens?
The juice not being worth the squeeze is not the dorms' fault.
American kids go massively into debt because their parents, their legislators and their universities have largely failed them. Kids aren't given a proper financial education before making the biggest financial decision of their lives. Laws were written to make student debt the most secure form of debt ever for lenders. Schools flush with public money have done nothing but increase the costs of education in ways that are often hardly visible or impactful for their students.
American students get an incredibly poor ROI for their education on average. Pick your degree wisely.
So people not clamoring to live in a shit windowless shoebox of a dorm might not reflect on the quality of the education?
I'm aware of a far less prestigious school where when they ran out of dorms they converted an abandoned super 8 motel for 3 years and the building was absolutely filthy and in terrible shape (it needed a new roof) and it was still full of students.
Being a fellow HN'er, I'll follow suit:
The most obvious response to Munger's critics is, "Then don't live there." The U.S. is blessed with a huge number of universities, meaning lot's of choice. Particularly for those individuals with the type of accomplishments that would get them into UCSB. (It's not Stanford, but it is very selective)
The University of California system is owned by, and created for the benefit of, the people of California. Decisions about how it should be run and what the dorms should look like should be made by democratic institutions and accountable to the public through regular elections.
Billionaires are blessed with a huge number of leisure time activities and ways to feed their own outsized egos, meaning lots of choice. Particularly for those individuals with the type of money that would allow them to donate entire large buildings.
Perhaps he could engage in those activities, and limit his interaction with public institutions to paying his fair share of taxes, and casting the single vote to which he is entitled.
Or to be more precise I am suggesting that the state take his money anyways, via taxation, and then decide how to spend it through democratic means.
(The “two entrances” argument I think is kind of irrelevant, skyscrapers only have one entrance and it works out fine).