Hah, I was thinking about some Army barracks I’ve seen in my time, although as someone who entered as an officer, I usually had nicer digs. The dorm rooms at West Point when I was a cadet were no worse than this in many respects, they were more spacious and had natural light but were shared by multiple cadets (this room tour other than the furnishings aren’t that different than how it was 40+ years ago: https://youtu.be/-gWJdPivOo8?t=213)
I just can’t see ANY parent of a child who has the slightest issue, from mild anxiety, teenage moodiness, borderline depression, Gay/trans, social ineptness, or any visible characteristic that might draw unwanted attention, etc, thinking a windowless room is a smart move.
Like uni isn’t stressful enough, for some kids? This seems certain to exacerbate any issues students might manifest.
There is zero chance I’d send my child into such accommodation, even without any mental health concerns. Living in a small windowless cell seems designed to create mental health problems to me. Pretty certain a windowless room would undo me in short order. I’d end up sleeping out in the common area every night.
By what reasonable measure is anyone in this dorm “living in a small windowless cell”? there’s room for a bed and a chair and little else. Clearly the intent here is that a resident would spend very little time in this bedroom except to sleep.
it seems to me the residents would be “living” the majority of their waking hours either in the large, sunlit common rooms, in classes, libraries, or academic buildings, or in all the other places that college students go rather than hanging out in their own bedrooms.
Yes, clearly the bedroom is designed primarily for you to sleep there, not to struggle to stay awake while doing something else.
I agree, if it were me, I’d likely leave the door open anytime I wasn’t actively sleeping or dressing. If there was natural light in the ‘suite’ room, I’d benefit from it. I object more to the suites being entirely windowless rather than the individual sleeping quarters.
There are a lot of people who are not as social as you. And forcing, less naturally social beings, into tiny windowless spaces as the only respite from social interactions/pressures, IMHO, will definitely increase mental health issues.
(Also, isn’t this place by the ocean? Isn’t there an amazing view, like, right there?)
Looking at the layout in the article, the common room as shown is a long, narrow room with individual bedrooms lining the long side. Only one side of the common room could have windows at all, and what is shown in the image is just one narrow window.
Ocean and mountains:
Stranger
Many of the common rooms are also windowless. This building is clearly designed by a person who has no problem with being continuously in artifical light. Such people exist; I know at least a couple of them (and you may be another); and they often have trouble understanding that many others aren’t like that.
For that matter, even people who badly need natural light may not understand what the problem is, and may be tired, irritable, and unable to concentrate but not think to link any of this to the lighting.
And I did most of my studying in my dorm room; partly because I found the windowless library carrels oppressive and the sunlit library spaces were usually full of people/distractions.
Munger’s explicit reason for his design is to force all students to socialize. That’s why the architect who resigned called it a ‘psychological experiment’.
It’s the kind of stupidity you get from a 97yo billionaire who is totally out of touch, especially with young people, arrogant, self-centered, and used to pushing people around and treating them like objects rather than individuals.
Something that has been only tangentially referred to that I see as a huge issue. First I will ask, has anyone here had a teen/young adult male child? They STINK!
You can do all of the laundry including their sheets, and they can shower before bed, and in the morning the room can still smell like a goat farm. Thousands of 18 to 20 year old males in windowless cubes? I don’t care what ventilation system you use, that is a recipe for Stank Central.
And what about art or architecture students, who have projects to work on or store? Where is this supposed to happen?
In the architecture building.
I think the intent of this dorm is to crush any sense of creative inspiration or aspiration for independent thought, so would-be artists and architects need not apply. As someone with a passing interest in architecture, I find this design horrific in so many differing ways; I can’t imagine what it would do to the spirit of someone actually studying architecture.
Also, I’m pretty sure what comes out of the faucets is Brawndo. “It has electrolytes!”
Stranger
This reminds me of my hall of residence at University, which was it has to be said an absolute shithole:
Owens Park - Wikipedia
Though I did have a great time, and am still friends with the people I met there (approaching quarter of century later), which does speak to the Munger’s intent that by having crappy rooms but a reasonable common area people will socialize more (we had a similar setup, with unbelievably crappy rooms, with tiny uncomfortable beds, but an OK common are). Not sure I’d intentionally create a crappy halls of residence for that reason. Additionally in the UK you usually are only in University accommodation for the first year, and arrange your own after that.
Quote from article in OP:
“Most of the bedrooms in his UCSB residence hall, for example, don’t have windows in order to coax students into common spaces where they can mingle and collaborate. The rooms would instead be fitted with artificial windows modeled after portholes on Disney cruise ships.”
The Disney Cruise Ship “Magical Portholes” are LED TV screens. I wonder what the life span of these artificial windows will be…
And can they be used as a TV screen? This may help add to the cost per bed.
They should just go the whole hog and issue the students with Facebook’s… sorry Meta’s… VR headsets.
You know those people who like to say colleges teach left wing ideology, breed communism, etc.? This seems like just the sort of extermination compound they’d design for a college dorm. HVAC breaks down–people die. Fire breaks out–people die. Virus breaks out–people die. Partial building collapse, Godzilla attacks, strong earthquake, local power failure–people die. Building such a structure for college dorms would send a strong signal to potential students indicating they should look elsewhere for an education. Howard Roark wouldn’t even dream of a structure so inhospitable because it’s not even suitably functional for its intended purpose.
A friend toured UC Berkeley in high school, when he was considering where to attend college and claimed that the tour guide pointed out the architecture building as the ugliest on campus.
I’m a little confused how typical college living arrangements that has multiple young adult males sharing the same room, sometimes in bunk beds is going to be any less of an odor problem.
The shoemaker’s children go barefoot.
Stranger