Architect: Dystopian Dorm Design Is Dangerous Social & Psychological Experiment

[jimmy olsen]

Yeah, I would rather not stay there.

https://gizmodo.com/architect-says-billionaires-dystopian-dorm-design-is-a-1847964193

Architect Says Billionaire's Dystopian Dorm Design Is a Dangerous Social and Psychological Experiment

Warren Buffet's right-hand man, Charlie Munger, designed a mammoth dorm with limited windows and only two entrances for 4,500 students.

ByWhitney Kimball
Yesterday 1:40PM
Comments (270)


The Santa Barbara Independent reports that architect Dennis McFadden has resigned from the school's Design Review Committee in protest over the planned Munger Hall, calling the 11-story mixed-use cellblock of academic halls and inward-facing compartments "a social and psychological experiment" with unknown impacts on thousands of subjects in the coming years. It will warehouse up to 4,500 students, 94 percent of whom will sleep in pods equipped with what appears to be artificial sunlight panels and bunks wedged into the wall, spending their formative years winding through eight-bedroom containers. Like rats. McFadden said the building only has two entrances (!) and it's unclear how accessible any emergency exits are or how robust the ventilation system is.

The place is gonna stink.

(In a press release, UCSB does not display images of the dorm rooms but the Independent obtained some renderings.)


UCSB Chancellor Henry Yang has called it "an unprecedented residential experience." Prison is similar, except here you pay rent. It does have retail space. And academic halls. And food.

They'll never need to leave.

The university has already moved ahead without a vote or approval process because Munger has money, the Santa Barbara Independent reports. Munger paid the school $200 million to let him install his creation on campus so long as they adhered precisely to his blueprints.

In an outraged letter to campus architect Julie Hendricks, McFadden said that there was no research presented to examine the human toll, that it would represent the eighth densest neighborhood on Earth. It is, he wrote, "unsupportable from my perspective as an architect, a parent, and a human being." He echoes the righteousness of George Bailey, except in a world where the banker just pays for everything, and that's the end, and people live in Mungerville, which is an actual location. Per a Wall Street Journal report on his architectural ventures:

Although Mr. Munger never formally studied architecture, he has experience developing real estate in Southern California. He built a community of luxury beachfront properties called Sea Meadow in Montecito, Calif., in the 1980s and '90s, which his friends call Mungerville.

But people love Charlie Munger, Warren Buffet's sidekick and investment sage. There must be a lesson in this. For one, there's the old good, cheap, and fast rule, and you can't have all three; this is cheap and fast. Each floor is only supposed to take 20 days of construction, and the university extols the modular prefab unit concept for its cost savings.

Or, if you work hard enough, someday you get a fire escape.

[11B4V]

Looks like a military barracks. What a bunch of snowflakes.

[jimmy olsen]

Looks like a military barracks. What a bunch of snowflakes.

Do barracks typically house a whole brigade?

[Richard Hakluyt]

A bit Jeremy Bentham.

[The Brain]

So is it up to code or not?

And stuff like

it's unclear ... how robust the ventilation system is.

The place is gonna stink.

makes me not immediately get on board with the article's outrage.

[grumbler]

Looks like a military barracks. What a bunch of snowflakes.

Yes, it looks like an old-school military barracks.  That's not a positive thing.  Those kinds of barracks were only tolerable for boot camps or when the military was made up of conscripts.

[Eddie Teach]

Looks like a military barracks. What a bunch of snowflakes.

Better a snowflake than a meathead.

[Josquius]

I wonder what wiggle there is in the contract.
So they get the money but they have to build it exactly as designed by a guy with no experience designing buildings....
How long before they can then modify it into something decent?

[mongers]

It looks like a wet dream for any potential campus/school mass shooter.

[Berkut]

The tone of the article makes me assume that all the facts in it are probably bullshit. So I remain completely oblivious to whether this is good or bad.

I will fall back on the basic idea that "Hey, why not try something different"? response.

[garbon]

Why would any student want to pay for that setup?

From the image showing each cluster, it looks like maybe two bathrooms per 12 (and one toilet in each bathroom)? That doesn't sound great for nasty college students.

[Jacob]

I'm not opposed to tiny rooms and living quarters in principle, but to me this sounds and looks on the face of it like it has a very high potential for going wrong.

Munger apparently has no architectural experience, yet he's designing a building, the specs which must be adhered to exactly. Architecture is a fairly complex field, and in all my experience putting enthusiastic dilettantes in charge of designing complex systems almost inevitably leads to severely suboptimal outcomes. Or did Munger work with actual experts and just put his name on the design as a vanity project?

It is pretty well established that consistent lack of natural light leads to poor sleep quality, stress, poor performance, negative impact on mental health, and lower quality of life. I believe it may be at least partially addressed with proper lighting design. Does this place have that?

Looking at the plans themselves a single point fire in any of the secondary corridors has the potential to trap everyone in one or two pods. A large fire would be worse. It being America, active shooter scenarios should probably also be considered.

Now I'm not an expert in these areas, so this could all be taken care of. Normally I'd trust that professionals would consider and address potential issues. In this case it seems the professionals responsible for signing off on the project would rather resign, which I think is concerning.

To garbon's point, though, from the 3d render int looks like two bathrooms per 8 (assuming single occupancy rooms).

[HisMajestyBOB]

That looks a lot like my Dwarf Fortress layouts.
Incidentally, Munger and I have the exact same amount of professional architecture experience.

[Razgovory]

This isn't that different than my dorm back in college.  Except it was 6 people to a bathroom instead of 8.  It looks like a it has an oven, which is nice.

[garbon]

To garbon's point, though, from the 3d render int looks like two bathrooms per 8 (assuming single occupancy rooms).

I can't count.