Proposed Munger Hall (4,500 student dorm) controversy

Charlie Munger offered a $200 million donation to help build new housing, but the catch is that it needs to be to his specifications. The proposed Munger Hall dorm is “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.”

Floor plans (see linked page) show that each floor would have eight “houses”, each with eight suites with eight single rooms and two bathrooms per suite. Each suite would have a small common area (about a third of the suite), and each “house” of eight suites would have a larger common area with windows.

More information and floor plans can be found at https://www.dfss.ucsb.edu/sites/default/files/docs/dcs/DRC%20Meeting%20Packet%2010.05.21.pdf starting at page 42. The first floor shown on page 57 includes various retail, study rooms, utilities, and surfboard storage. The detailed “house” floor plan on page 60 shows 10’*7’ single rooms. The suite common areas and the larger “house” common area show furniture that looks like office conference rooms. The “house” common area includes kitchen and laundry facilities. The top floor shown on page 64 has gyms, reading rooms, food retail, and a few other things.

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I’m definitely not an architect (yet), but the architect is right and this has to be some kind of experiment. A 97-year old billionaire came up with the plans and donated 200 million so that his conditions would be followed exactly? And the fact that UCSB is on a bright and sunny beach makes absolutely no sense for this type of dorm. The layout, students having no windows, and a lack of entrances/exits in the building seems awful for the students’ mental and physical health, so I really hope they don’t go through with this.

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I thought bedrooms were legally required to have an egress that a person can fit through.

No matter how “pretty” and modern it looks, it’s basically a prison.

Not to mention that $200 million donation barely dents the eye-popping $1.5billion price tag!

Hard pass!

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Or an office building – just replace all of the bedrooms and bathrooms in the suites with office cubicles.

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Munger Hall at Stanford is quite nice. The apartments were designed primarily for students in the B- and Law schools, altho other grad students can bid on it.

https://rde.stanford.edu/studenthousing/munger-graduate-residence

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Just goes to show money does not necessarily equate common sense. Nor does it keep you from becoming pixelated as you age.

The building sounds like a firetrap with no functioning windows and only two entrances/exits.

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Michigan has a Munger Hall for grad students but this article doesn’t mention a lack of windows in bedrooms.

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The reviews at Munger Graduate Residences, Ann Arbor | Reviews, photos, prices for 540 Thompson St for the Munger Graduate Residences at Michigan do include mention of lack of windows in most bedrooms (with varying levels of how much the reviewers care about that).

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Munger’s idea was proposed several years ago, but then I never heard more about it. I assumed it had died on the vine because of the strange conditions, so I was surprised to see it revived a few weeks ago. It never made sense to me, but I figured maybe smarter people knew more than I did. But after reading the architect’s statement, I am in agreement with him and hope they build something more appropriate for the school.

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[quote] The proposed Munger Hall dorm is “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.”

More information and floor plans can be found at https://www.dfss.ucsb.edu/sites/default/files/docs/dcs/DRC%20Meeting%20Packet%2010.05.21.pdf starting at page 42. … The detailed “house” floor plan on page 60 shows 10’*7’ single rooms.
[/quote]

That floor plan is depressing. I’m surprised that local zoning laws allow this.

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The basic tradeoff appears to be exterior wall length to interior area. With a squarish-shaped building, this ratio is relatively low, meaning that the potential area available for windows is small relative to the amount of space inside. Lining up 10’*7’ single rooms around the exterior walls would give only 160 single rooms per floor; even having 20’*7’ double rooms around the exterior walls would give only 320 beds per floor (versus the 512 single rooms per floor in the floor plan).

So basically, this proposed building loses the bedroom windows in exchange for being able to house more students.

It is unlikely that this type of issue would ever come up if it were being built on a long narrow piece of land that would require a long narrow building with a higher exterior wall length to interior area.

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Teh University of California is exempt from many local land use laws if they are developing their own property. That said, each campus tries to obtain local buy-in to avoid law suits taking years to resolve. Also note, nearly every UC campus has a housing shortage, which spills into the local community, so the community has an interest in UC using its own land to build more student housing.

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At this point his $200 million donation is a small part of a $1.5 billion project. Why should he get 100% say? He’s been very generous with other donations to the university and to other schools, but they can probably build something nice for $1.3 billion. UCSB has quite a few relatively new award-winning apartments and ocean view dorms, who would want to live in basically an interior room of a cruise ship?

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The peooe who made that brochure know that the living space sucks. There are photos upon photos of every single space, except the space in which the students will spend the largest amount of time. There is a single diagram of that awful floor plan, versus 15 photos and diagrams of the proposed bike shop (or whatever it is). Hell, they give more space to the lyrics of Queen’s song than they do the living space.

The brochure is a wonderful example of trying to obscure giant flaws behind small bells and whistles, by using what amounts to forced perspective.

It is ridiculous. Worse, it’s criminal - some uber-wealthy dude is playing at running experiments on colleges students. I guess that the dude got jealous of psychology departments and decided to pay the university to allow him to run his own personal experiment.

I swear, if I believed in crazy conspiracy theories, I would believe that he was test the feasibility of having mass production facilities at which the low ranked employees were required to sleep in mass dorms on site, so that they could get to work early.

Alternatively, he may be worried about The Coming Apocalypse or something, and is testing the feasibility living in giant underground spaces, so that the "elite’ can survive until life above ground becomes safe again…

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The proposed bicycle shop was a separate unrelated item on the committee’s agenda. Only the part starting at page 42 relates to the proposed Munger Hall.

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Guess having your own bathroom, workout space in the building and movie theater etc outway not having windows… On the reviews most are 5 star…

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Ahh, that explains it. Even for my cynical eye it seemed too much. Those pictures of the dorm rooms are scary, though. They look like prison rooms or cabins in Navy submarines.

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Regarding Here's your first chance to see inside U-M's new $155M Munger Graduate Dorm - mlive.com , photo 4 out of the 50 shows an apparently windowless bedroom.

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Look at the video review above . It shows the entire apartment with windows in the living room areas. Typical messy with 7 guys… Lol…

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The other reviews sites are mostly 5 stars with few mentioning not having windows… BTW…