4 ms·

It's clear the donor purposefully designed the rooms to be unpleasant to get people up into common rooms. It's just... weird. It doesn't matter if it looks good

It's clear the donor purposefully designed the rooms to be unpleasant to get people up into common rooms. It's just... weird. It doesn't matter if it looks good or bad but uncomfortable design like this is bizarrely aggressive to students, who are already living away from home and at-risk for depression and suicide. Not to mention that housing like this makes breeding grounds for the flu and other contagious illnesses. It's poorly timed given we're still battling Covid-19 worldwide.

throwaway09223 5y ago
As you note, students are at-risk for depression and suicide in today's existing student living quarters. We don't know whether or not a community focused living design would help or hurt in this regard. The covid/contagion question is interesting, because we DO know that designing for contagion safety is seemly inherently at odds with designing for social/emotional safety. I think there's no clearly superior solution here, which tells me that building both types of systems would at least help further our understanding of the issues.
spookthesunset 5y ago
> Not to mention that housing like this makes breeding grounds for the flu and other contagious illnesses. It's poorly timed given we're still battling Covid-19 worldwide. Designing 100 year buildings around our current hysterical reaction to covid is just silly. Covid is over, time to move on. History will harshly judge our reaction to covid and we will hopefully never repeat this awful public health policy again. The idea that we should be designing building with covid in mind is just a symptom of how much parts of society has lost the plot.
- hn_user82179 5y ago
  "Covid is over" is inaccurate and is at best very US/EU-centric. There is a reason though that I specifically called out all contagious illnesses. I can tell you that I got colds and the flu much more often in college than I do even in an open office. What's more, is students don't get sick days or time to catch up after an illness except in the most serious cases. I don't think it's illogical to think students (and their parents) don't want a dorm hotbed for contagions.

throwaway09223 5y ago

As you note, students are at-risk for depression and suicide in today's existing student living quarters. We don't know whether or not a community focused living design would help or hurt in this regard. The covid/contagion question is interesting, because we DO know that designing for contagion safety is seemly inherently at odds with designing for social/emotional safety. I think there's no clearly superior solution here, which tells me that building both types of systems would at least help further our understanding of the issues.

spookthesunset 5y ago

> Not to mention that housing like this makes breeding grounds for the flu and other contagious illnesses. It's poorly timed given we're still battling Covid-19 worldwide. Designing 100 year buildings around our current hysterical reaction to covid is just silly. Covid is over, time to move on. History will harshly judge our reaction to covid and we will hopefully never repeat this awful public health policy again. The idea that we should be designing building with covid in mind is just a symptom of how much parts of society has lost the plot.

hn_user82179 5y ago
"Covid is over" is inaccurate and is at best very US/EU-centric. There is a reason though that I specifically called out all contagious illnesses. I can tell you that I got colds and the flu much more often in college than I do even in an open office. What's more, is students don't get sick days or time to catch up after an illness except in the most serious cases. I don't think it's illogical to think students (and their parents) don't want a dorm hotbed for contagions.