Except it seems he forgot to invert the question of "How would I design an absolutely depressing and dangerous place to live?" then came up with that design.
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.