Seriously, I'm glad that shit like #MungerHall is very much illegal to build and every city hall in #Germany will refuse to permit this because it's not even legal as maximum security prison since even prisoners have #HumanRights like access to direct sunlight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXd7Y3HvUj4

"The Charlie Munger windowless dorm is the building of our moment"

The controversial Munger Hall at University of California Santa Barbara represents the university's capitulation to "the whims of old white men" and will lead to another Greta Thunberg moment, argues UCLA architecture professor and City Lab director Dana Cuff.

Architecture has the capacity to coalesce historical eras by reflecting society at a key moment in time , telling us the story of our shared existence. In 1981, an uproar sprang from the winning competition entry for the Vietnam War Memorial by Maya Lin, a young Asian woman still a graduate student.

In the early 1970s, the demolition of nearly 3,000 units of public housing at Pruitt-Igoe designed by Minoru Yamasaki symbolized the end of modernist utopian aspirations, and with them, the idea of warehousing poor families of color. One step further back, when public housing programs were advanced by the federal government in the 1930s and '40s, public debate raged. In each of these moments, social and political conditions reached a flashpoint that was clarified by architecture.

A building or monument mirrors back to architects and the general public an intelligible translation of swirling complexities otherwise hard to grasp. When that happens, the debate around the architecture is a debate about our shared existence. Alas, the Charlie Munger windowless dorm at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) is attracting so much attention because it is the building of our moment.

What was confusing or invisible now seems apparent, and what we see is surely not the world we want to live in but one we seem resigned to accept. Despite all our contemporary divisiveness, from political partisanship to architecture’s incoherent response to climate change and homelessness, the UCSB-Munger building is bringing us all back together. The real question is: in response, will we collectively rise up or give up?

Think of the UCSB-Munger solution as bringing steerage class and San Quentin to campus

The grossly scaled, concrete, semi-classically decorated, Costco-capped, 4,500-bed dormitory architecturally captures, all at once, the grim realities of our impoverished public sphere, the bloated powers of industry kings and the punishing inequities that face students even in the best public university in the nation.

Repercussions from California’s taxpayer revolt of 1978 mean only 8.3 per cent of the UC budget now comes from the state. In 2012, rising student tuition exceeded the state contribution for the first time in history. Even further cuts to the state budget are sending UC to look for revenues like out-of-state tuition, but also income from residential services, including dormitory rents.

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Architect resigns over mostly windowless Munger Hall dormitory at University of California

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So the university capitulates to the whims of old white men like Munger, the Berkshire Hathaway billionaire who promises $200 million toward the $1.5 billion estimated cost and dictates the architecture in which a full 20 per cent of undergraduate students' lives will be lived, with no guarantees of affordability. Small rooms, each holding a bed and desk, are organized around a common room, and none of these spaces has any natural light or ventilation.

Prisons and lower ship decks use exactly this model – think of the UCSB-Munger solution as bringing steerage class and San Quentin to campus. Maybe that’s unfair to the Department of Justice, which recommends natural light throughout their facilities.

The huge embodied carbon in its concrete construction is environmentally indefensible

On top of that, the 11-story windowless building goes against UC’s 2020 Sustainable Practices Policy. Without windows, the building requires electrification and mechanical systems where daylight and natural ventilation would have pleasurably sufficed, and the huge embodied carbon in its concrete construction is environmentally indefensible.

Even though the university will have to find the other $1.3 billion, it capitulated to Munger’s donation and to the further privatization of the world’s best public university system. We can see the results of industry titans evading taxes, and then "donating" far less than they owed in taxes to get the next write-off. We shouldn’t be too surprised when Munger offers to build a business school so long as he can shape the curriculum.

[

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Mostly windowless mega dormitory "fixes Corbusier's errors" on Unité d'Habitation says billionaire designer

](https://www.dezeen.com/2021/11/05/munger-hall-mega-dormitory-corbusier-unite-dhabitation/)

According to knowledgeable sources, the building is further developed than published schematic plans might imply, which is surprising given the apparent indifference to code requirements tied to bedrooms without windows and lack of required egress. For sleeping rooms that exit into another room rather than the outside, there must be a safe evacuation passage in case of fire or earthquake. To get to an exterior wall from inside UCSB-Munger, inevitably long corridors between cell blocks will be part of a life-safety system, generating the need for all that concrete and "communal spaces" overwhelmed by safety requirements.

Building code renders the common good through setting minimum standards to protect the public health, safety, and welfare, but that doesn’t absolve the architects, Van Tilburg Banvard and Soderbergh, or UCSB for that matter, from abandoning the intent of the code.

When I asked my students their opinion about the UCSB-Munger building, their sanguine reaction surprised me

As an architecture professor at University of California Los Angeles, and director of the design research center cityLAB, my students and I have been working for the past five years to understand student housing insecurity and come up with dignified, creative solutions. Nationwide, in 2020, 15 per cent of students at four-year colleges experienced homelessness and over 40 per cent had some kind of significant housing challenge.

When I asked my students their opinion about the UCSB-Munger building, their sanguine reaction surprised me but it shouldn’t have. Besides dorm rooms, students look for every avenue to affordably sleep near campus from overcrowded apartments to couch-surfing. Captive for four years, a housing crisis can generate a residential version of Stockholm Syndrome among students who rationalize unacceptable conditions.

After tuition, housing is the second largest expense for UC students so it is no wonder they have been advocating for the cheapest solution they can imagine: safe parking. Students consider the UCSB-Munger building in relation to available grim alternatives: better than a car or a sardine can.

We are facing another Greta Thunberg moment when youth will have to show the way forward

Our cityLAB studies found the most affordable housing available to students is living in a co-op, a group house where a few hours of weekly work serves to lower rents, or living at home often with crushing commutes. In response to commuter issues, cityLAB and UCLA created an on-campus lounge where these students can nap, study, or stay overnight for free.

This one small solution, along with a range of decent dormitories, co-ops, rooming houses, co-living arrangements, motel conversions, and even some safe parking would mirror students’ lives far more humanely than one giant concrete block.

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Petition launched to stop construction of controversial Munger Hall dormitory

](https://www.dezeen.com/2021/11/17/munger-hall-dormitory-petition/)

But it looks like the grown-ups have lost their way: UCSB, Munger, VTBS Architects, have all abdicated their responsibility to the students as well as to the environment. Yet despite UCSB students living in vans, motel rooms, and on friends’ couches, the windowless dorm sparked a protest demanding humane housing solutions.

We are facing another Greta Thunberg moment when youth will have to show the way forward. It should be architecture students who envision creative new alternatives, along with UCSB students, students advocating for safe parking, students commuting hours each way to get an education, and all the others who are being offered lousy housing options. Remixing John Legend and Lennon, tomorrow’s starting now so if you’re out there: all together now.

The main image is courtesy of University of California Santa Barbara

Dana Cuff is an architect, d irector ofCity Lab and a p rofessor at the Department of Architecture and Urban Design University of California Los Angeles.

The post "The Charlie Munger windowless dorm is the building of our moment" appeared first on Dezeen.

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Petition launched to stop construction of controversial Munger Hall dormitory

More than 12,000 people have signed a petition against the construction of Munger Hall, a mostly windowless student dormitory for the University of California backed by billionaire investor Charles Munger.

The campaign, which is hosted on change.org, was launched by Tommy Young, a student at the university's Santa Barbara campus where the housing is set to be built.

Munger Hall hit the headlines in recent weeks due to its controversial design, which could see over 90 per cent of its student residents live in windowless rooms.

The proposal, which measures 1.68 million square feet (156,000 square metres) and could house up to 4,500 students, is also designed with only 14 entrances and exits.

Petition responds to proposal's "glaring problems"

Young's petition was filed to allow students at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) and the wider community "to voice their opposition to this building". At the time of writing, it has 12,161 signatures.

"I am not an architecture major, but it does not take an architecture major to recognize the glaring problems with this structure, and the administration's refusal to recognize the criticism they have received from architects," Young states in his petition.

"UCSB has a housing crisis, and this must be addressed," the student continues. "However, warehousing students in one windowless superstructure designed by an amateur architect is not the solution."

Ninety-four per cent of student rooms in Munger Hall would not have windows

The Munger Hall proposal comprises nine dense floors of residences, which would make it the largest dormitory building in the world if built.

Each of its nine floors will have eight "houses" containing eight separate "suites", organised around a communal kitchen and living area. This layout would see 94 per cent of students live in single-occupancy bedrooms with virtual windows that simulate sunlight.

Second petition filed by architectural historians

Since Young launched the petition, a second one with over 3,000 signatures has also been filed by the University of California Santa Barbara's (UCSB) Architectural Historians Group.

The group said the petition was "to signal [its] adamant opposition" to the project and to support architect Dennis McFadden, a longtime member of the University of California's Design Review Committee who recently stepped down from his position in protest of the building's design.

In his letter of resignation, McFadden said that the design made it "unsupportable from my perspective as an architect, a parent, and a human being".

Single-occupancy bedrooms would be arranged around common dining areas

McFadden added that there was also no possibility of making changes to the dormitory's design, as reported by the Santa Barbara Independent.

"The design was described as 100 per cent complete, approval was not requested, no vote was taken, and no further submittals are intended or required," he wrote.

Design references Disney Cruise ships

In an interview with the Architectural Record, billionaire Munger has explained that the idea for the windowless dorms was inspired by Disney Cruise ships.

"We had a window shortage," he said. "So we just copied what Disney Cruises did. The way Disney does it, the window is really a television set. Those work beautifully on the ships."

He added that the design is safe as it will be constructed with "sprinklered concrete" and have "enough exits to satisfy all of the codes".

Munger, who is the vice-chairman of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate, has no formal architecture training. The detailed design of the housing is being carried out by VTBS Architects, which is the architect of record on the project.

[

Read:

Mostly windowless mega dormitory "fixes Corbusier's errors" on Unité d'Habitation says billionaire designer

](https://www.dezeen.com/2021/11/05/munger-hall-mega-dormitory-corbusier-unite-dhabitation/)

In response to the backlash, VTBS Architects' managing principal Navy F Banvard told Dezeen that the concerns over the lack of windows were unfounded.

"All virtual windows will have a fully programmed circadian rhythm control system to substantially reflect the lighting levels and color temperature of natural daylight," he said.

In response to the controversial story, we rounded up ten buildings with glassless facades.

The main image of Munger Hall is courtesy of University of California Santa Barbara.

The post Petition launched to stop construction of controversial Munger Hall dormitory appeared first on Dezeen.

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