8 people and one bathroom. WTF! Lotta people gonna be shitting in bags
Perhaps there will be super pooper in common areas where 50 people can take dump at same time.
Architect Resigns in Protest over UCSB Mega-Dorm
401–410 of 700 posts
Re: Architect Resigns in Protest over UCSB Mega-Dorm
#402as someone who attended ucsb and has also spent a week in a bedroom without a window I really hope this doesn't happen. it'll really mess the kids up. I felt awful waking up in that room. not having any natural light to cue you in to what time it is forces you to turn on the light to wake up. waking up to artificial light is an absolute miserable experience and if I had to do it for a year I would leave... of course…
i'd sue to try to get that money back. but i'd also expect to know before signing that i'd get such a room.
but i would not stay. my mental health is not worth it.
Re: Architect Resigns in Protest over UCSB Mega-Dorm
#403The reasoning for this architecture is supposedly to encourage socializing, but my suspicion is it will actually do the opposite.
The tiny rooms are perfectly compatible with the "antisocial 4channer" lifestyle. Internet addicts will probably be thankful because there is less space they have to keep clean.
What it seriously discourages is inviting someone into your room, doing sports, caring for plants or pets or inviting your own group of friends for a boardgame night.
It also takes away any agency over when or with whom you want to socialize by forcing you through the common area when you want to eat or just have to use the bathroom.
I've been in a dorm with single-occupancy rooms but shared kitchens. I can say it can get extremely awkward if some other group is having a party and you just want to cook something for dinner. And that design had an ordinary shared kitchen, separate from the floor. I can only imagine how awkward it gets if the only way to your room is through the common area.
The forced socializing (but only with your housemates) reminds me of something out of The Crimson Rivers. If that billionaire guy demanded exclusive authority over room assignments next, I wouldn't be completely surprised.
Re: Architect Resigns in Protest over UCSB Mega-Dorm
#404Munger also did the same thing for the University of Michigan's graduate residence building^; 95% of the rooms have no windows. ^ https://housing.umich.edu/residence-hall/munger/
Worth noting that the UM building is a significantly different scope and scape: https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/2015/07/heres_your_firs... It houses 96 suites, 6—7 bedrooms each. Each bedroom is 16x9 with their own private bathroom. In one of the blueprints in the UCSB article, there appears to be 1 bathroom per 8 suites [1]. To be fair, graduate housing is supposed to be a bit better than undergrad dorms — espe…
> there appears to be 1 bathroom per 8 suites
That looks like two bathrooms per 1 suite, or 1 bathroom per 4 rooms. I never shared a bathroom with less than 3 other people in my four years at college, so that doesn't seem particularly out of the ordinary for an undergraduate dorm.
The difference in size of rooms seems significant, though.
Re: Architect Resigns in Protest over UCSB Mega-Dorm
#405From my point-of-view as a former firefighter, I would say this: A building meant to house 4500 students, with only two entrances? There's a word for that: deathtrap. Building this is setting UCSB up to be the site of the next Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire[1], Station Nightclub fire[2], or Hamlet Chicken Processing Plant fire[3]. At a first glance, based only on the information provided in the article, I'd say tha…
Many if not all UC campuses need only respect state regulations. City and County building codes need not apply, and fire codes, hopefully would, but University administrators have room to push that.
Land grant universities!
Re: Architect Resigns in Protest over UCSB Mega-Dorm
#406Earlier quoted context omitted.
I count ten emergency stairwells on every floor: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FC1jlGjVEAIvAG8?format=jpg
That's 450 people per stairwell. Assuming 20 people per floor, it would be packed with lines extending out into the floors.
Is this really any different than any highrise, that nobody seems to have this very pressing concern over?
Re: Architect Resigns in Protest over UCSB Mega-Dorm
#407From my point-of-view as a former firefighter, I would say this: A building meant to house 4500 students, with only two entrances? There's a word for that: deathtrap. Building this is setting UCSB up to be the site of the next Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire[1], Station Nightclub fire[2], or Hamlet Chicken Processing Plant fire[3]. At a first glance, based only on the information provided in the article, I'd say tha…
A lot of charming naïveté here along the lines of "surely the city has fire regulations, and surely the building will be reviewed for those!"
You forget the power of money. I live near the Apple Spaceship, where they have the city of Cupertino completely cowed and afraid to even ask a question about their stupid plans. An entire useful east-west artery (Pruneridge) was permanently taken out of service for that.
It's so cute when you assume that Santa Barbara is going to say No to this.
Re: Architect Resigns in Protest over UCSB Mega-Dorm
#408Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reviews of this residence: https://www.veryapt.com/ApartmentReview-a7222-munger-graduat...
Residents seem to like it overall but reading though them, most qualify them as "great except the rooms don't have windows". It feels mean, for lack of a better word. Maybe particularly in Santa Barbara with its beautiful sunny days. There's something dystopian about putting young students in windowless rooms and figuring "they'll get used to it". Next step is to save money by getting rid of windows in apartments, of…
It's probably better in SB than just about anywhere else, since you can quite literally always just go outside. I think that's almost part of the "point" here. To try to demotivate students from sitting in their rooms. I don't like that approach at all, but I actually don't think windowless bedrooms are the worst thing in the world.
I had a windowless dorm room for a year in a very cold northeastern city where I couldn't realistically spend time outside for most of the year. It was attached to a windowed suite common room and I liked my roommates, so it was no big deal. I think I would have suffered a lot had I been a real social recluse, though.
Re: Architect Resigns in Protest over UCSB Mega-Dorm
#409Earlier quoted context omitted.
This design came from an amateur architect, someone who has never designed ANY building before and is surely clueless about safety laws and even basic physical structural limits. To imagine the design has seen anywhere sufficient review by others who DO know what they're doing is assuming a lot. All this just to save $200/1500 (13%)? You can get a better discount than that at any retailer.
I think you're overreading the amateur architect angle. Presumably, they didn't say "Hi, Charlie Munger, please draw up a building for us on a napkin." It's in fact a barb that Munger is a non-practicing architect, and apparently ruffled feathers with the professional architect on the committee. Which, from working with some prima donna architects, I am both unsurprised and unsympathetic about. Building engineers ens…
> Building engineers ensure everything is to code. Architects fret about whether it looks and feels right.
The idea that architects don't worry about building code is absolutely incorrect on a project of any scale.
Prima donna "starchitects" worry less, but that's because they've hired other architects to handle it.
Re: Architect Resigns in Protest over UCSB Mega-Dorm
#410Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which is great except 50% of people are introverts and need space to recharge. How many people live like this in real life? That speaks to the choice of hanging out followed by "leave me alone". It sounds like an experiment but it could probably have been done slightly further "away from home" if it was about collaboration. Just have places to encourage people to hang out if they want to and not if they don't. Forcin…
Living like this is actually pretty common both at universities and as a young adult. You have private space, a shared kitchen/dining room, and the building has lounges and other public amenities. Your room is for sleep, and possibly study, though there are other places on campus with fewer distractions. You can choose to eat and work together in groups in your dining room. You socialize away from your suite so you d…
> The dorms that I used had all sorts of unpleasant features
Just because you had a poor dorm experience doesn't mean a brand new dorm built in 2021 needs to replicate that experience.