Except all the outrage came from people who never lived in his buildings, and the ones who did gave it overwhelmingly great reviews.
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...
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.