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To this day I deeply miss the ability to, when bored, wander down the hall and see whose door was open and what was going on, or to leave my own door open and g
by blahedo 7y ago
To this day I deeply miss the ability to, when bored, wander down the hall and see whose door was open and what was going on, or to leave my own door open and get drawn into whatever interesting thing arose on the hallway. But aside from aging out of college myself, far less people are even getting access to that in the first place. The entire "dorm" model is dying at colleges, as the residential buildings, though still colloquially called dorms, are really just apartment buildings, except more expensive and they kick you out for a while every couple months.
- Scoundreller 7y agoOr the ugly middle: where colleges built dorms in the old style/dimensions, but you were still forced to have self-closing 50lb fire doors because of fire code regulations.
- shawxe 7y agoHonestly, these doors are terrible. I just moved out of an apartment building where they were for some reason required and everything from carrying in furniture to carrying in groceries. I know this is extremely tangential, but if anyone can speak to exactly how/why these are supposed to improve outcomes in the event of a fire, I'd love to hear it.
- function_seven 7y agoThey compartmentalize whatever fire may occur, so that it doesn't quickly spread down the hallways and corridors. They also serve as barriers to smoke. The cheap way of doing this is to have self-closing doors that remain shut all the time. Hospitals and other high-traffic locations will have door holds that keep the doors open unless the fire alarm is tripped. When an alarm occurs, the door holds release and the fire doors close.
- saagarjha 7y agoFWIW, door stops work quite well.
- Symbiote 7y agoMy residence hall (we don't really say "dorm" in the UK any more) had these "expensive" things to hold the doors open, back in the early 2000s. It's an electromagnet connected to the fire alarm system; the door has a metal plate. This is a safety improvement, because it avoids people propping doors open with wedges, chairs or fire extinguishers. All the halls had them, as well as many doors in the academic buildings, whether they were new buildings or renovated 19th century buildings.
- WalterBright 7y agoI've often thought that dorms could be built for young, single workers. I, too, enjoyed living in the dorms in college, and miss the camaraderie there.
- christianmann 7y agoWeLive was similar to this. Wonder how they're doing these days?
- peterjussi 7y agoThis is a thing for many older big companies in Japan