The dormitory’s nine identical residential floors would be organized into eight “houses” with eight “suites” (shown here) with eight bedrooms.
Posted on 10/29/2021 5:33:39 PM PDT by algore
A consulting architect on UCSB’s Design Review Committee has quit his post in protest over the university’s proposed Munger Hall project, calling the massive, mostly-windowless dormitory plan “unsupportable from my perspective as an architect, a parent, and a human being.”
In his October 25 resignation letter to UCSB Campus Architect Julie Hendricks, Dennis McFadden ― a well-respected Southern California architect with 15 years on the committee ― goes scorched earth on the radical new building concept, which calls for an 11-story, 1.68-million-square-foot structure that would house up to 4,500 students, 94 percent of whom would not have windows in their small, single-occupancy bedrooms.
The idea was conceived by 97-year-old billionaire-investor turned amateur-architect Charles Munger, who donated $200 million toward the project with the condition that his blueprints be followed exactly. Munger maintains the small living quarters would coax residents out of their rooms and into larger common areas, where they could interact and collaborate.
He also argues the off-site prefabrication of standardized building elements ― the nine residential levels feature identical floor plans ― would save on construction costs. The entire proposal, which comes as UCSB desperately attempts to add to its overstretched housing stock, is budgeted somewhere in the range of $1.5 billion. Chancellor Henry Yang has hailed it as “inspired and revolutionary.”
McFadden disagreed sharply with what the university has described as “Charlie’s Vision” for the benefits of a “close-knit” living experience. “An ample body of documented evidence shows that interior environments with access to natural light, air, and views to nature improve both the physical and mental well being of occupants,” he wrote. “The Munger Hall design ignores this evidence and seems to take the position that it doesn’t matter.”
So far, McFadden continued, the university has not offered any research or data to justify the unprecedented departure from normal student housing standards, historical trends, and basic sustainability principles. “Rather,” he said, “as the ‘vision’ of a single donor, the building is a social and psychological experiment with an unknown impact on the lives and personal development of the undergraduates the university serves.”
McFadden explains he felt compelled to step down from from the Design Review Committee (DRC) after it became clear during an October 5 presentation that the dorm’s plans were already set in stone.
“The design was described as 100% complete, approval was not requested, no vote was taken, and no further submittals are intended or required,” he said. “Yet in the nearly fifteen years I served as a consulting architect to the DRC, no project was brought before the committee that is larger, more transformational, and potentially more destructive to the campus as a place than Munger Hall.” This kind of outlandish proposal is exactly why the committee exists, he said.
Cripes its a damn prison where everyone gets solitary.
The dormitory’s nine identical residential floors would be organized into eight “houses” with eight “suites” (shown here) with eight bedrooms.
Go to your windowless cell and like it.
Sounds like Agenda 21 housing.
At least they’re no hot-bunking
Did he get the idea from the inside cabins on a cruise ship?
Windowless? Might cut down on suicides during finals.
Architecture in general has seen a world of hurt since the dawn of the 21st Century, at least. Boxy, drab, cheap, and unoriginal must be the goal.
Can you imagine the line in the morning to use the one toilet.
> Munger maintains the small living quarters would coax residents out of their rooms and into larger common areas, where they could interact and collaborate. <
More social engineering by the elite. You wanna coax residents into the common areas? Put out some donuts.
Seems like something the Sovs would have designed.
UCSB, on the coast just west of Santa Barbara, Calif. has one of the most scenic locations of any university in the world—yet they are not going to provide windows.
It’s an ant farm for people.
I would point out that the number of day light hours a kid is in their dorm room is rather small. Each kid is getting their own room. And the interior space is much larger. We got windows. But they meant the room was way to hot in summer and way to cold in winter. It also meant that we only had narrow hallways to gather in with one common room that could not handle all of us.
Students will either like them or hate them. Most of the dorm rooms my children had were dreadful. Often they were over stuffed little rooms with nothing but cinder block walls and no circulating air. Just call these dorms Japanese Modern and everyone will think they are cool.
The Soviets had better housing
Waiting for the toilet?
That’s why there’s no windows.
Stalikas and Brezshnevkas
This Yang creature has overseen the destruction of any semblance of grace and beauty on the campus and is evidently striving to turn the campus into a gulag. Oh, and by the by, this 'plan' flies in the face of any shred of these leftists' pretend concern over virus or other disease sharing.
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