Not giving up is an important aspect of undergraduate learning, and the University of California, Santa Barbara is neatly reinforcing that lesson by offering a new preview of its besmirched Munger Hall megadorm project seven months following the initial public rollout.
Billionaire donor Charles Munger’s ambitious design is now offering in-person tours of mockups to students, faculty, and staff in addition to an animated video walkthrough of its record-breaking 1.68-million-square-foot interior, which is beset with outward-facing lounges and common areas to offset an otherwise “inhumane” lack of windows and natural light in the living quarters.
The university began erecting full-scale physical mockups a few years ago with the purpose of soliciting “campus feedback,” but plans of in-person tours were pushed back due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now that the opportunity of walkthroughs has reemerged, the exhibition also aims at dissuading a growing chorus of skeptics that included the local AIA Los Angeles chapter, numerous architectural media outlets, and eight former UC campus architects.
“We built the full-scale model apartment as a way to try out different designs for the rooms,” a member of the project team insisted on the tour’s webpage. “With the knowledge that mockups help people see what the architects have in mind much better than just a drawing on paper, we also wanted to offer tours. Once you see it, you better understand it.”
Inside, the dorm offers what appears to be rather plush views of the harbor and surrounding ultra-affluent Goleta and Isla Vista communities, whose dearth of affordable housing stock is apparently the project’s greatest motivating factor behind the system-wide issue of over-enrollment and available on-campus lodging.
In keeping with the Oscar Wilde dictum that “A cynic is [someone] who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing,” the university claims its $1 billion-plus price tag will provide an increase of 30% over the current amount of housing options in the hopes of alleviating what at times appears to be bordering on an existential concern.
“The goal of Munger Hall is to provide every student with a single bedroom; promote community and collaboration; and develop bonds among students. The residence will address current enrollment levels and will not be used to increase campus enrollment,” a statement on the tour page explains.
It also appears that the university’s Board of Regents may have been in talks with Munger, who has made some $265 million worth of donations to UCSB dating back to 2014, longer than reporting would have originally indicated. Although the official narrative starts with local architect Dennis McFadden’s spirited resignation from the school’s Design Review Committee following a unanimous approval of the project in early October, text on the tour page indicated that the preview was first slated to begin in 2020, before “plans were derailed by the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The entire video tour can be viewed in its original format here. Stay tuned to Archinect as we follow the progress of the development and its ongoing opposition.
Editor's Note: An earlier version of the article stated that the Munger Hall mock-up was built in November 2021. This statement has been corrected.
67 Comments
Now that's what I call homey! There are only 57 of these cozy kitchens in Hunger Mall.
Make sure to write your name on your kale salad container, kids.
Edit: I jokingly thought I overstated at 57. It's actually 88.
This is all a conspiracy to sell more airtags. Which fucking refrigerator did I put my groceries in?!
Coming soon: easy-to-follow instructions for carving your phone into a shiv.
Nah, you can just order one on Amazon.
Maybe get some 6'-3 to 7'-3" tall big guy in there to just show the flaws of such cramped quarters and what a person that is at university for 4-5 years or more is going to generally accumulate. That bed in 4th picture from the top, I would be cramped up in that bed. Congrats, I'm going to have a legitimate excuse for putting my foot through the wall....lol. (Seriously, no). If you didn't want me to put my foot in the wall, you would have provided for leg room for someone who isn't under 5' tall.
No disrespect intended but it shows quite a shortcoming (pun unintended or maybe it's kind of intended but not with disrespect to those of shorter height) of the thinking here. And I would have thought my 80 sq.ft. home office room is small.... wow.
“The goal of Munger Hall is to provide every student with a single bedroom; promote community and collaboration; and develop bonds among students."
Total BS.
Lipstick on a pig.
These mockups do not convey the oppressive totality of the proposed building.
First, not only is this design attempt banged up, so are the refrigerators.
Second, renderings without plants, or people does not prove "livability". Third, those closets, or are students supposed to actually live in those things? They're literally to small for hobbits.
Spot on. I noticed some of the same issues as well and similar conculsions. We are talking COLLEGE students not pre-school and Kindergarten age. Might as well be student housing for an on-campus pre-k to Kindergarten age kids. I'd be better off bringing my own matress and sleep ON the table. At least I would have a bed.... lol. (If I were to go to that college/university and attend class).
plants would die from the lack of natural light.
The Zyklon B comes out of those spiffy modern light fixtures in each room, right?
This cartoon version of student housing should be saved for Munger's personal mausoleum. Room for all his relatives, dead or alive.
It is numbing how mean-spirited and at the same time exorbitant this thing is.
The common area of each "house" serves 64 students. There are 8 houses on each of 9 floors, so there would be 72 of them, citizen (I think I have this right). The common area has 4 refrigerators, 3-4 oven ranges, 3 dishwashers, and 7 microwaves. Each cell has a refrigerator and a dishwasher.
Are they assuming students will prepare most of their meals and eat there? Will there be enough gear? If not eat there, then what is all that stuff for? I have no idea how the arrangement will work out for the 64 students, and I don't think the school knows either.
That means the entire dorm will have:
864 refrigerators
792 dishwashers
504 microwaves
216-288 oven ranges
Plus well over 4500 of those magic led panels.
My college dorm had none of those things. Later, students bought little fridges and microwaves for their rooms. Eating meals was our way to get out of the dorm, and we ate in halls where we chose our companions among the broad mix of the campus, not the 63 we would get stuck with in Munger. We were busy. We didn't have time to shop and cook. And we couldn't cook worth sh*t.
All these appliances will have to be serviced and replaced after x years. There are other long term costs. The climate is quite moderate in Santa Barbara, and students could get by nicely with windows and a little heat the winter months, maybe get a fan the warmer months. At Munger, the HVAC will have to run 24/7 to maintain any kind of air quality. And the HVAC and elevators will have to be serviced (I didn't have either of these, either) and eventually replaced. Maintenance and cleaning, in general, will be a mammoth task.
So much unneeded waste—how much will this thing cost in the long run?
And these are the just simple mechanical details.
I love that first sentence, Gary: how this thing manages to be simultaneously cheap AND extravagant, but in the worst way.
I counted on the rendering what I thought were 11 housing floors and multiplied by 8 modules. I can't bring myself to go back and stare at that thing again, so I'll accept your tally =O/
this key design feature - the common living space - has nothing more than the dullness and banal discomfort of an airport hotel business center.
the committee is trying to get the endowment yet kill the building, right? these are rich people living in a beautiful city; they know what nice things look like. no one could actually look at these renderings and feel confident that doubters will be convinced. it's self-evidently terrible.
how is it that nimbyism in it's frustrating omnipresence hasn't thrown up some obstruction to this?
They have gone to great—and deceptive—lengths to promote this thing however, to make it look "nice." I wonder how much all this effort cost. And I can't believe there won't be compromises if (when) the thing is actually built.
I believe I heard the mock-up cost $2 million.
Munger, I understand, got his idea for the LED "window" panels in the cells from cabins in a Disney cruise ship.
It depresses me how much we get stuck with bad ideas, the problems they cause. The problems increase exponentially when the plans are large scale and often are irreversible.
From all we've read, the process was this simple: Munger made the offer, leveraging it with his $200+ million gift, and the chancellor bought it and has been pushing it ever since, some eight years now, with no outside discussion or feedback or any consideration of alternatives.
The plan is just an abstract idea, based on nothing but numbers and orderly layout. We have no idea how this thing will work, but have every reason to be skeptical, if not terrified, about how the dorm will influence students socially, physically, and psychologically. Massing large numbers of people close together and forcing them into a program, taking away their options, we know, is not a good idea. Community is not created by throwing people together.
How do we know it will work? Munger tells us it will work, and that's it. His Michigan dorm does not provide proof of concept. It is much, much smaller and the evidence is sketchy. Because of its size and compactness, Munger Hall UCSB is radically different by several orders. There is no evidence of studies made by authorities, who might know, that factor in student profiles, social patterns, student life in general or at UCSB in particular and how these might be affected by a building this scale. I wonder if simple traffic patterns have been fully factored in, what it will be like when 4500 students leave the building in the morning.
Once a bad idea enters the culture, someone will take it seriously (see "stolen election") and we pay the price. Other chancellors aren't looking on and considering similar concessions? Housing developers? And once we give in to such concessions, we ratchet the culture down another notch.
The video contains the first context rendering I've seen. The baseball field gives a sense of scale.
Yes, an unintended consequence if ever there was one. "See? It'll fit on the site! And there's other stuff around it, so don't you worry, naysayers!"
Plus, the radial scheme created too much exterior surface. "What's with all the windows?"
What is this, citizen?
The web tells me it's Bory Pilzen prison in the Czech Republic, one of the classic panopticon correctional designs from the 1800s. My snarky point is that in that institution, at least, every prisoner got a window.
Pilzen looks more workable in comparison with Munger, even nicer. That's the one redeeming grace of the project, that it makes everything look better.
I hope the plans and renderings, even the mock-up, are preserved for posterity and make their way into the textbooks and architectural memory as a reminder, a warning of what happens when the process goes wrong.
This picture gives a sense of human scale up close. Note the students on the walk.
I think that critique is too harsh. Do you not see those lovely, delicate Juliet balconies every other floor? I know I'm sold.
Also, those scale figures look only 5'3 or 5'4. Put a few six-footers in there, and it'll be clear the project is properly scaled :O]
I don't think a 3D walkthrough - even one rendered to lifelike perfection - helps to sell the core design principles of the building. It still looks like some kind of subterranean bunker. They could've pasted some entourage figures of students enjoying themselves in the common spaces I guess.
Munger playing architect is unfortunate but I wouldn't pin all the blame on him. The man is paying for the project and most crucially, has no training in architecture at all. He has some (misguided) ideas that should not have come to fruition in a public project under the guidance of a professional architect. The architects in charge should defend the design in their own terms and the university regents are accountable for their role in promoting the scheme too.
If an outsider with zero investment experience gets to write an investor's letter in lieu of Buffet and Munger in Berkshire Hathaway's annual report, I'd blame the two legendary investors for allowing that to happen - not the noob.
i think you're on to something. the basic premise could work if the social areas were actually wonderful community spaces and the sleep chambers cozy and inviting. instead it's just a design done in excel and then rendered. munger is proposing a radical and difficult (and expensive!) concept for a new kind of residential space and then hiring a bread and butter condos firm to figure it out, without any elaboration on the vision and what it requires to be successful given the problems of this kind of dorm arrangement.
good architects don't let the client draw the plans. even an ordinary sfh will be a disaster if you work like that.
These guys are either pandering entirely to their client's whims or ... this is as good a design as they can produce. Hey, if they're designing Munger's own mansion than so be it. But this is a dorm for hundreds!
doubling down on a loosing hand is always a good winning strategy.
^ Exactly.
Off topic: Is the extra 'o' in losing like the 'u' in colour? ;O]
that's the canadian accent. it also shows up in 'what aboot that'
hey now, tabarnack. leave my poutine alone.
Or the students could go to the Savannah College of Art and Design and study historical preservation among other majors in the college's Lacoste, France, location while living in dorms that date back as far as the 12th century and restored by artists and designers. Similar climate no? Which college housing experience would you want your kid to have?
I wonder: Should a wealthy donor - without whose $$$ this project would not have existed - have a say in the design of the public building? Yes, of course he or she can have an input. How that personal preference is manifested into design documents is the professional prerogative of the architect. Say, a billionaire proposes a building with only 1 door or a building that floats on tiny stilts because he or she loves the idea. The architect and engineer would exercise their professional duties and reject the ideas because they are not code compliant or structurally feasible. End of story - anything else would be negligence. This Munger Hall debacle is unfortunately less clear-cut. There is a dose of personal aesthetic preference mixed with a dollop of interior design ambition. The former is ... subjective - the latter less so, but it begs the question whether any of the core concepts are code violations or just plain horrible. The architects seem to think it's fair game and entirely compliant.
There are experiments that show the harm that overcrowding causes.
There are a lot of other factors to the design that breaks code compliance. Those little dorms rooms looks awfully non-compatible with the ADA / ADAAG & FHA standards. Additionally, I see a lot of problems with means of egress issues. A standard SFR and even MFR apartments, bedrooms needs windows (or door) directly to exterior for emergency fire escape.
Then for the love of God, bin this damned proposal. It looks ridiculous and if it doesn't even meet code than the architects have gotta tell Munger it doesn't work!
Looking back at the other threads on this projects, there is some concerning egress issues especially if there was a major fire with a lot of smoke conditions. Look at the floor plan and I can see people potentially getting kind of lost especially if there is a lot of smoke and you can't even get a clear bearing to where the exits are and egress out. What if a fire occurs in the hall near the door of a dorm unit. How do they get out of their sleeping room (bedroom). Even on an SFR, bedrooms are expected to have a means of a person getting out either through a window or an exterior door so they can leave the bedroom directly if they can't for any reason out the way through the interior egress. I'm kind of surprised that virtually all the units where the students sleep don't have such an egress or means for people to get rescued by fire trucks. I think a clever and smart architect could device adequate means for a fire escape for all those elevated floors and be asthetically pleasing. Fire escape means does'n't always have to be ugly. I see options like we see with multi-floor motels with multiple exterior stairways down. There are a number of issues and I would have said, the way the plan is with floor plans and such, it doesn't work. There is a lot of issues with what Munger appears to be pushing considering he's only financing
Let's get real about the purpose and intent of this design.
A simple question.
What aspect of human behavior would this design preclude or make extremely difficult?
Well, Munger wants to preclude privacy and have the students mingle as much as possible. Why that goal somehow got translated into a subterranean bunker instead of an open, naturally-lit building is beyond me.
Imo the whole point of this design is so that the students won't have a love life.
Excerpts From The American Institute of Architects Canon of Ethics
CANON I: General Obligations Members should maintain and advance their knowledge of the art and science of architecture, respect the body of architectural accomplishment, contribute to its growth, thoughtfully consider the social and environmental impact of their professional activities, and exercise learned and uncompromised professional judgment
CANON VI: Obligations to the Environment Members should promote sustainable design and development principles in their professional activities. E.S. 6.1 Sustainable Design: In performing design work, Members should be environmentally responsible and advocate sustainable building and site design. E.S. 6.2 Sustainable Development: In performing professional services, Members should advocate the design, construction, and operation of sustainable buildings and communities. E.S. 6.3 Sustainable Practices: Members should use sustainable practices within their firms and professional organizations, and they should encourage their clients to do the same.
The Architects of Munger Hall have made a mockery of both ethical and
mandated standards for buildings meant to serve the public. The outrage has become universal.
Is this the same AIA that gave their blessing to tear down the Chase Bank headquarters in NYC a couple of years after the bank spent a gazillion dollars completely redoing the building and bringing it to LEED Platinum standard? Natalie de Blois was the original principal architect.
What's the point of having a code of ethics, AIA if they themselves don't follow through by leading by example. Thou shall not impose on others which they do not impose on thou self. The point.... LEAD BY EXAMPLE. If you say.... thou sall not do this or that then ye shall lead by example of not doing this or that. If ye sayeth that thou shall design sustainably then ye shall lead by example of designing sustainably. Maybe, my quasi-Old English might come across at least for a lame entertainment value while taking the point being made.
Munger, I assume, was able to leverage decisions with his donation others couldn't have. Still, he's putting up $265 million for a project projected at $1.4 billion, and we still haven't heard where UCSB will get the rest of the money.
I don't know how far it will stretch, but $1.4 billion is a hefty chunk of change, which could have been put to good use eight years ago.
UCSB is not an urban campus, but it will need to compress and go up a bit—and make concessions. In the area above, Munger will replace the service buildings above the baseball field. It's hard to believe this space couldn't be put to better use with a complex of dorms interspersed with open areas. A plan could have been started that could have been completed over the years, that would have been integrated with the rest of the campus esthetically and set the tone for the future.
And there have to be other options across the rest of the campus.
Campuses, like students, need light and air. And students need to be invited into the overall campus, its varied program. Munger Hall, isolated, wholly contained, stands opposed. With 4500 students, it approaches—or well exceeds—a critical mass of some sort. The "social" space, its main feature, is dubious and wasted space and expense. Dorms don't need that much, and students need to get out into the rest of the campus and find themselves, not be cooped up together. It's as if Munger doesn't want them to leave his dorm. I sense personality disorder.
Keep it simple, make it durable, design it well, use good materials. Munger wastes tons of money on unnecessary doodads. The materials, however, likely will be cheap and look cheap, especially after a few years of wear. Aalto's Baker House provides contrast, which has held up well for decades and remains one of the most esthetically pleasing and popular buildings at MIT.
But I've learned my lesson from Munger. I'm an amateur. Turn the project over to people who know, planners and architects.
I just bumped into this:
Feinberg Hall, Princeton, by Williams and Tsien. It's an unusual project, a dorm that only houses 40. The idea is to provide a symbolic marker for a dorm complex, a kind of portal.
It makes the transition between the older gothic dorm on the right and simpler, more modern brick buildings on the left and behind.
Princeton, of course, has lots of $.
https://twbta.com/work/academi...
If I was them, I'd install one of these, at every water closet.
Some sort of industrial/hi-tech bong, or a micro-generator?
Sewage grinder for prisons.
Sophomore Andy D. sneaks out of Munger after midnight, when card-readers shut down.
@beta whats the purpose, reduce smells or a required maintenance?
I'd assume it's to destroy contraband.
If inmates shove sheets, clothing, etc, the grinder chews it up.
The architects who go along with this remind me of the child psychiatrists who provide puberty blocker drugs for perfectly normal pre-puberty boys and girls just because their batshit parents demand it.
going to assume that's a thinly veiled anti-trans jive. shame.
I'll have you know my gender is #23 and my pronouns are %^& and (*&.
Your wit is as original and interesting as the rest of your opinions.
I had you pegged for a #17, V.
So much for gubiment stay out of my life?
Charlie Munger sez, "stop complaining, everybody's five times better off than they used to be."
https://www.nbclosangeles.com/...
The project has been on the boards for a long time; the project appears to have the UBC grandfathering on plan.
Who re-pooped this?
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