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You do not need to be an architect to see that living in windowless boxes (not rooms) will damage young adults psychologically. Just put yourself into this room

You do not need to be an architect to see that living in windowless boxes (not rooms) will damage young adults psychologically. Just put yourself into this room and try to study for 6 hours a day. It looks worse than a prison cell. This old fart probably has his own ideas about how poor students need to work and live in order to "earn" an education. Not to mention anything regarding virus spreading...

asiachick 5y ago
Millions of people ( billions?) live in windowless boxes (not rooms) and there is no evidence they're damaged psychologically. I'm not saying I don't prefer windows but this kind of statement strikes me as privileged bubble thinking.
themitigating 5y ago
But you do need to prove that statement because you are implying it's obvious
- comrh 5y ago
  There's a huge amount of research done by actual architects on what makes a building "healthy" for human occupation. https://www.wellcertified.com/ https://www.wellcertified.com/
  - asiachick 5y ago
    There's also an incentive for them to make buildings as large and as expensive as possible as they it affects their income. Certainly I'd argue self interestedly that all living quarters should be as large and extravagant as possible as I'd like to live in a large extravagant place. But, millions (billions?) of people are doing just fine in much smaller places than these self interested architects are suggesting.
    - comrh 5y ago
      That's not really how architecture works. There is a client supplied budget and site that multiple architecture firms submit proposals for. Suggesting a needlessly large and expensive building will do nothing but leave you without any work.
gbronner 5y ago
The goal is to get the students out of their bedrooms. There's plenty of common space, and lots of really nice places to go study and socialize out of your bedroom. This is intended to promote real-life socialization, which is the only real reason to go to in-person college these days. Plus, everyone gets a single! My college roommates had blackout curtains on the small windows in our rooms. Not sure how this is different.
- lbriner 5y ago
  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. Forcing them just feels like mental breakdown waiting-to-happen.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    Or, you force socialization on a population that's increasingly turning inward, to the detriment of society in general. It's hubris that on one hand HN can bitch about how egomaniacal companies like Facebook and Google are, and yet on the other complain about how architecture designed to promote socialization is unfair. Where do we think those social-deaf, micro-optimizing engineers come from?
    - ghaff 5y ago
      Among other things, architectural design makes decisions about how space is allocated and how it will probably be used. Of course, architects get things wrong. The dorm I lived in undergraduate did a fair bit well--and also had some common space that was sort of out of the way and was hardly ever used. But one way or another, an architect is going to design things in a way that (they think) optimizes for certain behaviors and use whether that's socializing/collaborating or the maximum privacy/anonymity.
    - 5y ago
swalsh 5y ago
I worked in this office where there were windows, but I was really far away from any of the light they emitted. I'd get these pounding headaches every day until I moved to a different floor where I was closer to the window. It was a miserable place to work.
tomtheelder 5y ago
I actually lived in a room remarkably similar to this one year in college. It was marginally bigger than what is pictured, but the space was used far less efficiently (lots of annoying free-standing furniture) so functionally it was probably smaller. Aside from the lack of a window making it awfully hard to wake up in the morning, it was no big deal. It was actually my favorite dorm room I had in college. The single-room-in-a-suite model is amazing. The big thing was that I had a common room shared with my suite-mates which was large-ish, comfortable, and naturally lit. I spent my time at home there, but it's college so I spent most of my time out of the dorm anyway. My big concern with this UCSB dorm would be for students who are significantly asocial. For the many who crave an isolated personal space, it could be majorly depressing. I get the idea that the entire goal of the design is to try to get people to not behave that way, but I doubt that will work. I'd guess this dorm would be a great experience for a very significant majority of students, but basically a torture chamber for an unfortunate minority. Ergo it's probably an extremely bad idea.
- thehappypm 5y ago
  Yeah, I feel like most folks here are wildly out of touch with what it's like to be a college student, including the architect. I, and just about everyone else from my college, would trade just about every creature comfort for a private room to sleep. In fact my college had suites like these and they were fought over tooth-and-nail in the room draw process. I think one of the most bizarre things we accept in life is college kids being forced into doubles and triples. College "kids" are adults, not little kids in camp. Plus, even with my window in my single suite room, my sleep cycle was so messed up half the time due to the occasional all-nighter that having no window might have actually been easier for me to deal with.
  - kwhitefoot 5y ago
    > I think one of the most bizarre things we accept in life is college kids being forced into doubles and triples. I went to uni. in the 70s in the UK. I never had to share. A few students at the same uni. did but it was almost always possible to move to a single room later in the year. Do so many US students really have to share rooms, and if so why?

asiachick 5y ago

Millions of people ( billions?) live in windowless boxes (not rooms) and there is no evidence they're damaged psychologically. I'm not saying I don't prefer windows but this kind of statement strikes me as privileged bubble thinking.

themitigating 5y ago

But you do need to prove that statement because you are implying it's obvious

comrh 5y ago
There's a huge amount of research done by actual architects on what makes a building "healthy" for human occupation. https://www.wellcertified.com/ https://www.wellcertified.com/
- asiachick 5y ago
  There's also an incentive for them to make buildings as large and as expensive as possible as they it affects their income. Certainly I'd argue self interestedly that all living quarters should be as large and extravagant as possible as I'd like to live in a large extravagant place. But, millions (billions?) of people are doing just fine in much smaller places than these self interested architects are suggesting.
  - comrh 5y ago
    That's not really how architecture works. There is a client supplied budget and site that multiple architecture firms submit proposals for. Suggesting a needlessly large and expensive building will do nothing but leave you without any work.

gbronner 5y ago

The goal is to get the students out of their bedrooms. There's plenty of common space, and lots of really nice places to go study and socialize out of your bedroom. This is intended to promote real-life socialization, which is the only real reason to go to in-person college these days. Plus, everyone gets a single! My college roommates had blackout curtains on the small windows in our rooms. Not sure how this is different.

lbriner 5y ago
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. Forcing them just feels like mental breakdown waiting-to-happen.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  Or, you force socialization on a population that's increasingly turning inward, to the detriment of society in general. It's hubris that on one hand HN can bitch about how egomaniacal companies like Facebook and Google are, and yet on the other complain about how architecture designed to promote socialization is unfair. Where do we think those social-deaf, micro-optimizing engineers come from?
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Among other things, architectural design makes decisions about how space is allocated and how it will probably be used. Of course, architects get things wrong. The dorm I lived in undergraduate did a fair bit well--and also had some common space that was sort of out of the way and was hardly ever used. But one way or another, an architect is going to design things in a way that (they think) optimizes for certain behaviors and use whether that's socializing/collaborating or the maximum privacy/anonymity.
  - 5y ago

swalsh 5y ago

I worked in this office where there were windows, but I was really far away from any of the light they emitted. I'd get these pounding headaches every day until I moved to a different floor where I was closer to the window. It was a miserable place to work.

tomtheelder 5y ago

I actually lived in a room remarkably similar to this one year in college. It was marginally bigger than what is pictured, but the space was used far less efficiently (lots of annoying free-standing furniture) so functionally it was probably smaller. Aside from the lack of a window making it awfully hard to wake up in the morning, it was no big deal. It was actually my favorite dorm room I had in college. The single-room-in-a-suite model is amazing. The big thing was that I had a common room shared with my suite-mates which was large-ish, comfortable, and naturally lit. I spent my time at home there, but it's college so I spent most of my time out of the dorm anyway. My big concern with this UCSB dorm would be for students who are significantly asocial. For the many who crave an isolated personal space, it could be majorly depressing. I get the idea that the entire goal of the design is to try to get people to not behave that way, but I doubt that will work. I'd guess this dorm would be a great experience for a very significant majority of students, but basically a torture chamber for an unfortunate minority. Ergo it's probably an extremely bad idea.

thehappypm 5y ago
Yeah, I feel like most folks here are wildly out of touch with what it's like to be a college student, including the architect. I, and just about everyone else from my college, would trade just about every creature comfort for a private room to sleep. In fact my college had suites like these and they were fought over tooth-and-nail in the room draw process. I think one of the most bizarre things we accept in life is college kids being forced into doubles and triples. College "kids" are adults, not little kids in camp. Plus, even with my window in my single suite room, my sleep cycle was so messed up half the time due to the occasional all-nighter that having no window might have actually been easier for me to deal with.
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  > I think one of the most bizarre things we accept in life is college kids being forced into doubles and triples. I went to uni. in the 70s in the UK. I never had to share. A few students at the same uni. did but it was almost always possible to move to a single room later in the year. Do so many US students really have to share rooms, and if so why?