I’ve never heard Dhaka referred to as a “neighborhood” before.
It looks like a cross between a beehive and an elaborate Skinner box.
I was thinking more along the lines of Kowloon Walled City, myself.
My Dwarf Fortress-playing spouse informs me they have just instantiated the mountainhome.
I think I’d be more open to a really weird solution if there was some evidence that it was actually going to represent some kind of great savings or efficiency, but I read somewhere that this is going to cost something like $330,000 per bed, which is insane.
Yeah, that was my thought - even a lot of prisons still have windows in the cells. Not always, but still…
Also, forcing people to socialize is not a good thing. Not everyone is an extrovert.
From a safety standpoint: just two entrances/exits for a building housing over 4000? WTF? How is that NOT a violation of a fire code? How could you possibly evacuate everyone during an emergency requiring it?
I used to work across the street from Cabrini-Green and knew many of its residents. Don’t insult Cabrini-Green with this comparison. And no, I’m not making a funny, I’m serious.
Apartments at Cabrini-Green were more spacious. They had not just more windows but actual windows. They also had more entrances/exits because of Chicago fire code requirements.
This project sounds like money once again smothering common sense. This architect is doing a real service by resigning in protest and detailing his (very valid) objections. If only others in public life would do the same under comparable circumstances.
That’s what I thought when I first saw this, but those are just the main entrances. There appear to be six other stairwells in the plans, each with an emergency exit door at the bottom.
Well, I’m glad it’s not just me. It just seems almost like punishment to not allow any windows. I think the weather there is nice enough to not need air conditioning if you can open the windows, but without that, I’d think you’d need the a/c on a lot more often.
The article notes that this dormitory will cost $1.5 billion and that the investor who designed it is contributing $200 million. So the university surrenders all control over design and gets this white elephant for only $1.3 billion.
Eight exits for 4500 people still sounds inadequate.
And if there’s a power outage, do they all suffocate? I find it hard to imagine there’s a lot of passive air exchange in that monstrosity.
I spent two nights in a windowless hotel room in London. I was looking for a room somewhat late, and it was by far the cheapest option that worked. (It was just one windowless room in a mostly normal hotel building.) It was … weird. I don’t regret having done it, but i think if i lived without seeing the sun long-term i would get sick. I wonder how sailors on submarines manage.
Yes, and even at $1.3 billion, it’s still hugely overpriced. $289,000 per bed is 3 or 4 times the usual cost for building a dormitory.
I’m not convinced it’s a particularly efficient use of space either. I wouldn’t be shocked if a normal high-rise dorm, even one designed to give every student a single bedroom and have only single bathrooms, has more beds per square foot too.
A few comments - some expanding on other comments:
Put all of your eggs in one basket. There are SO many instances where that has worked out well. Does the university have a plan to evacuate and house everyone if the building becomes suddenly unlivable due to a mechanical breakdown, flood, power outage, or hurricane?
Granted, this is still in the proposal stage, but this is the type of living that can push someone over the edge. Somewhere, someone is not thinking of students as real people. Look how well that worked for Ted Kaczynski.
I get that there is a real problem which needs to be addressed, but at least every common area should have a window to the outside. Even if it means replacing the “one block” with multiple towers.
Only two exits? Three words: “active shooter event”.
I live in Santa Barbara and this idea is getting horrible press in the area. I haven’t heard one person in favor of the idea. There is a horrible housing crunch here, especially for students. Regular dorm rooms designed for doubles are apparently all triples now. Isla Vista, the student neighborhood attached to the university is said to be the most densely packed neighborhood in the whole western US (to be fair, this was also true 30 years ago).
Something needs to be done but it’s not this. To me the most offensive thing is the social engineering part. The idea that all young adults are the same and need to have their housing designed to force behavior is idiotic, paternalistic and wrong. I highly doubt it will go through as is.
That’s just not good enough!
He didn’t cram enough people into a small enough space.
If you use two levels, you can cram in twice the number of students. They don’t really need to be able to stand up in their cubicles do they?
He should have based his design on capsule hotels.
This is such an obvious boondoggle that I have to wonder if the university administration is just going through the motions in order to humor an eccentric billionaire donor, knowing that it’ll never actually get built but hoping they can put the blame on someone else. “Sorry Chuck, the permitting office says we can’t build a 4,500 person residence with only two entrances. Damn short-sighted bureaucrats! Maybe we could go with this more conventional design heavily inspired by your revolutionary vision?”
I am all in favor of trying new things. That said, new ideas ought not to be tried out on such a grand scale. This looks like a very nice Scandinavian prison.
All in all, it not often a good thing when a client has a lot of money and even more ego. Bill Brosius comes to mind, but I suppose also our current crop of billionaires.
He’s 97. Maybe the plan is to wait him out and then once he’s safely in the ground try to get court to let them keep the money without obeying his exact wishes?
FWIW, he’s built this type of student housing before. The scale is smaller, but it appears to be based on the same concept.
I’m not crazy about the windowless bedrooms, but I like the apartment/suite concept. When I was in college, dorm suites - 4 smaller single bedrooms surrounding a common living area were considered much better than the standard two person dorm room - and those were reserved for athletes.
I can’t speak to the safety of the CA design, and I’m not crazy about windowless bedrooms - the bedrooms at U of M are 16’ x 9’, not huge but not a cubicle, either.
It’s not for everyone, but I suspect there are a lot of younger people that are very social, don’t go to their bedrooms except to sleep (and they don’t sleep much) who would gladly trade spacious bedrooms with windows for a large very nice common area and lots of amenities.
BTW -Munger is Warren Buffet’s long time business partner. I’ve worked for his son, who is a liberal activist and donor in NYC.
This is just to get the US accustomed to the idea that people CAN tolerate living in cage like spaces, as seen in places like Honk Kong. Most cities have building codes that set minimums for space and airflow, exits, windows etc. Capitalists are seizing an opportunity to leverage a (created) housing shortage, to get those done away with.
Start with desperate students, (being less protected than even prisoners, in this regard, as uni is a private entity!) Even in my small city builders are pushing to be allowed to build ‘micro’ apartments, falling well below building code minimums. Citing a created housing crisis!
If they manage to get this by, it’s only a matter of time before it’s; ‘Why should prisoners get better treatment?’, and, ‘But we need MORE nursing home spaces desperately!’ Ending with seniors in housing just like HK cage units.
Good governance is about making the right choice at the right time, now is the time to shut this concept down, for the good of everyone’s future housing prospects. But in US cash is king, money does all the talking. Uni stands to make big profit for decades off this housing. They will of course, dress it up as, ‘this income will insure we can delivery high quality education at lowest cost!’, an outright lie!
Every mercenary housing developer is watching very closely, I imagine! There is no way to turn back the tide, that I can see, if this goes through.