Yeah, I’m not buying that students will be “deprived of sunlight.” The bedrooms are clearly designed primarily for sleeping, when you wouldn’t get sunlight anyway.
You’re not looking at the floor plan of the whole floor. Each of those kitchenette/dining areas leads to a large common area for the “house,” one wall of which is all windows. Each floor has eight of these common areas.
Jesus, have you seen how people in the world live? This isn’t some kind of hell-hole. This is how millions of people in the world live, in cramped quarters.
People who need some alone time go somewhere else to be alone. I’m sure the students of Santa Barbara have many places to go to be by themselves. I certainly did when I was in college.
“Forcing people into tiny, windowless spaces as the only respite.” Please, the hyperbole is making me swoon.
You need a break from your roommates? Leave the dorm, for Pete’s sakes. Sunny Southern California has a whole world of locations to be by yourself that isn’t in your dorm.
First world problems …
That’s the problem, isn’t it?
This is a billionaire tossing more money than any of us will ever personally possess to reproduce conditions that, in his own words, deliberately replicate non-first world conditions.
The question is not whether or not students can live in such conditions but whether this use of a considerable amount money will result in the best mental and social well being of the students who live there. The consensus in this thread and at large is generally “no”, along with some concern about physical well-being in case of emergencies.
Even your own reply implies that you don’t consider this concept necessarily ideal. I’d say your reply was more along the lines of “suck it up, buttercup”, which implies you yourself believe more conventional design elements might work better at the purported goals of the dorm.
Most of the common rooms have no windows, either.
But the common areas don’t have sunlight, either. You have to go out of the suite entirely. Those “common areas” that have windows? They serve 64 kids each. That’s a lot of people. Too many people to study there, or socialize with friends there, or… Really, to do any of the things college students do. That’s weirdly wasted space.
How hard would it be to add window wells so each suite had an actual window, and access to sunlight and fresh air?
So, one “large common area” for 64 people? This looks even more like a prison.
Looking at residence rates for dorm housing for UCSB in the 2021-22 academic year, they list $16,527 in room and board fees. Assuming about a $20/day food plan cost and 8 months of housing, that is still almost $1,500/month for a tiny, windowless private room and a common area shared amongst a large enough group of people that you can pretty much ensure that it will be useless for studying.
This is social engineering for institutional conformance, imposed in the form of architectural requirements of a non-architect from on an ostensible ‘gift’ that is a fraction of the estimated total cost of construction from the guy who’s response to people complaining about government bailouts was lecturing the audience that financial hardship is “just worldly life”, and the guidance to “Suck it up and cope, buddy, suck it in and cope!”:
Fuck that guy.
Stranger
And what’s the trade-off preventing you from just putting gaps between the “houses”? You’d still have all of the parts of the building nearly as accessible from each other, but you’d be able to put windows in.
UCSB students: “We’ll drink to that!”
Where do your clothes go? Your sports equipment, your musical instruments, your engineering projects? Under your mattress?
If I had had to live in this dorm my freshman year, I’d have blown my brains out.
Yes, is there some massive shortage of land, that they can’t afford to insert window wells, like they do in sparsely inhabited spaces like NYC?
golf clap
Stranger
The university and Munger can deflect criticism of Dormzilla by emphasizing and expanding on its green energy cred (the UMich Munger residence allegedly has energy-saving attributes).
Just stick a few solar panels on the building (maybe where windows would have gone), import other solar power, use some of Charlie’s $200 million on carbon credits, and name it the “Munger Climate Pledge Dormitory”. Critics will be forced to support it in order to save the planet. Privileged students can be shamed into spending four years of cramped but glorious self-sacrifice there.
Hee.
But you’re evidently quoting someone else, not me.
Just because some people in the world live like that doesn’t mean we have to lower ourselves to that level. Would it be OK if there was no running water either because that’s how “millions of people live”.
It’s definately a first world problem when we’re deliberately lowering ourselves to a standard below the first world.
But where would you keep the gun?
What I object to is the ridiculous hyperbole, both in the architect’s letter and by some posts in this thread. I said I would not prefer to live in a residence designed like that. I would prefer not to live in my current circumstances.
Something being of not one’s preference, or less desirable than something else, or not of the ideal circumstance is not wanton cruelty. It is not an assault on the mental health of students.
If you wouldn’t like to live in that dorm, just say, like I did, “I would prefer not to live in that dorm.” Beyond that, if you are posting conclusions like “would deprive residents of sunlight and air,” then, please, ugh, consume some perspective and context. Student dorms, especially first-year dorms, are designed to be lightly lived in and provide minimal amenities.
There is ample opportunity to soak up sunlight and air … leave your dorm room. You’re going to be there for only 30 weeks anyway.
It’s like sleep-away camp, which traditionally offers minimal amenities and space in residential quarters … you’re not meant to be spending much time there anyway.
This design offers each resident a private bedroom. That’s waaay more than traditional dormitories offer.
The private bedroom is nice. But i would get sick without natural lighting. I wake up to sunlight every day. At summer camp, with a saggy cot in a tent full of other kids i woke up to sunlight. In prisons the prisoners can see the sun. No, it’s not good enough to “go someplace else to get sun”. Maybe it would be for you. My circadian rhythm would be shot and i would need under a huge degree of stress.
And there’s no need to deprive the residents of light. Just cut a window well between each “house” and each student could get a little light by leaving their door open.
It’s brutality for the sake of brutality.
OK, and what happens when, at 2 AM when almost all of the residents are in the building and in their beds, there’s a power outage that shuts down the ventilation system?
Yeah, this thing is psychologically unsafe, and minimize that if you want, but it’s also physically unsafe.
The outrage over the architectural horror of the building aside, the real issue is that one donor putting up ~15% of the estimated construction cost is apparently dictating specific design construction details that a professional architect quit the design review committee and expressed the opinion that it was “unsupportable from my perspective as an architect, a parent, and a human being.” You can argue that this just a commentary on personal preference, but I think it is pretty obvious that there are easy modifications that could be made to the design to make it more palatable and livable but that go against the dictum of the donor who, again, is only putting up a minority of the total funding. The response of UCSB should be, “Thanks, but no…when you want to actually offer a donation, let us know and we’ll be happy to engrave your name on a toilet seat.”
As demonstrated in the clip above, Munger is already a pretty egregious example of the plutocrat believing he knows better than the grubby proles beneath him and that anyone criticizing his statements or ideas should “Suck it up.” “Gifting” money to the university but then insisting on particular details as some kind of social ideal about how to control student behavior is a kind of extreme parody of grossly self-assured kleptocracy; like a literary baby conceived in a night of drunken fumbling between Ayn Rand and John Kennedy Toole.
I repeat: fuck that guy.
Stranger
Another life saved thanks to a total lack of storage space!
Yeah, NYC has window wells not just because people like them, but because the law requires a certain level of passive ventilation.
1203.1 General
Buildings shall be provided with natural ventilation in accordance with Section 1203.4, and/or mechanical ventilation in accordance with the New York City Mechanical Code . All habitable spaces shall be provided with natural ventilation in accordance with Section 1203.4.
Bedrooms are “habitable space”.