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Interview with Charlie Munger on Controversial UCSB Dorm

• Flatcircle 5y ago
  Actually not a bad idea tbh. Of course that many students can’t have windows. The fact each student gets their own room is pretty sweet
  • Jbolt01 5y ago
    I wonder if they could do something similar to cruise ships that have displays which show a video of the outside so it's like a virtual window.
    • cm2187 5y ago
      That’s covered in the interview. Too expensive but the artificial light is meant to be close enough and can be controlled by the student.
  • bmitc 5y ago
    I had my own room in college, with a large bedroom window and then a living room and bathroom I shared with one other person. You don't need a shipping container approach to living to get your own room.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • bambax 5y ago
      At my university (in France) we all had a room with a big window and a balcony, and a shared shower for two (each room had a door to the same shower, so you could go from one room to the other through the shower). The bathrooms were for the whole floor. It was very nice, if a little unusual.
  • ookware 5y ago
    This is ridiculous. In the UK it is accepted that all students get their own room, although they usually share facilities like bathrooms and kitchens etc. And they all have windows. It is very different having a two week cruise, or working 9-5 in an office, but to have a windowless room as your only private space for 3 years+ is unhealthy and unfair on a segment of the community who get very little say in their living arrangements in any case. This is a 98 year old man who thinks he is special because he is rich, and therefore everything he turns his hand to will be the best and damn those who disagree.
    • aidenn0 5y ago
      At UCSB many (most?) students live in private housing after 1 or two years.
      • jrochkind1 5y ago
        It seems possible university requirements for this will change, if part of the motive for this construction is [from OP] that "UCSB is experiencing a severe housing shortage and is being pressured by area residents to build new dormitories" -- seems like it doesn't meet that pressure unless they increase the number of students living on campus, right? They're going to have to fill those 4500 beds (about 20% of the total undergraduate enrollment of UCSB) once they're built... seems safe to assume one way or another the portion of students living on-campus will increase significantly once this dorm is built.
        • aidenn0 5y ago
          It's also of note that private housing like this (or even more traditional dormitories) would be illegal in either Santa Barbara or Goleta; boarding houses are nearly impossible to get through zoning. Which would certainly make it more affordable for young, unmarried people to live in the area (who currently commute from Ventura, Solvang or Buelton).
      • kevinmchugh 5y ago
        Presumably this project is an attempt to address that
  • handol 5y ago
    And they rarely need to leave with the Costco and the night club on the roof.
  • chubot 5y ago
    It's definitely possible for every room to have its own window. There's a well known solution to this: the courtyard. I just stayed in the middle of Manhattan in London Terrace, in a one bedroom apartment where the living room, bedroom, kitchen, AND bathroom ALL HAD WINDOWS. This is rare in Manhattan (and in most parts of the country), simply because architects/owners decided to cut costs. London Terrace is an entire city block of buildings designed around a big courtyard in the middle. I learned first hand what "pre-war" means :) Pre-war means "expensive apartments that people like because nobody builds them like this anymore". (It's not perfect, and I decided not to live there, but it has many good points) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Terrace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Terrace It was one of the biggest apartment buildings in the world at the time of construction (1930's). It has 1700 apartments, and every apartment has 3 or more rooms, so it's probably bigger than the 4500-room Munger building. You obviously sacrifice density, but I can't imagine how that's a problem in Santa Barbara vs. Manhattan! You can build higher, or you can build 2 buildings on different sites rather than 1. It's obviously more expensive than making a big storage cube, but I would argue it's worth it. And Munger could obviously afford it. Not sure why he would put his name on such a building.
  • postingawayonhn 5y ago
    Of course they can. Instead of building one building with gigantic floorplates build half a dozen with smaller floorplates optimised to give each room a window. If that reduces the overall floor area just add a few more floors on top.
• 55555 5y ago
  His proposed building looks like an American Kowloon Walled City lol
  • SeanLuke 5y ago
    Fun fact. I used to work in the Kowloon Walled City. It's really not anything like it.
    • ngc248 5y ago
      would like to know a bit more ... how was it working there?
      • SeanLuke 5y ago
        I worked in Hong Kong as a missionary from 1988 to 1990, and part of that time was spent in Kowloon City (a region of Hong Kong which contained the Kowloon Walled City). The Kowloon Walled City largely consisted of a large block of walk-up highrises so close to one another than there was no ventilation. The way you got into it was through what I'd describe as rat tunnels snaking underneath the buildings. The actual living environment was horrific. We'd often try to find out how to get up to the roof of the locally tallest building and watch the airplanes fly overhead and land at nearby Kai Tak airport. They were so close you could probably hit them with a rock. One particularly vivid memory I have is of the illegal dental offices which ringed the outside street level. These shops all had skulls in the windows with teeth showing their handiwork. I recently went back to visit the place -- the city had been torn down, revealing the original historic garrison at the center, and it's now a lovely park. When I was there the garrison was kid of like a little quad in the middle of the City where nobody dared build: many people thought it was originally a temple (it wasn't).
• arthurcolle 5y ago
  Charlie Munger seems like an insufferable asshole. I find it creepy a 97 year old wants to control the lives of 4,500 22-24 year old people, every year, for many years into the future basically for sport.
  • deleted 5y ago
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  • ardit33 5y ago
    He is giving the money, with conditions, and he is a 97yo, who at that age might have/might have not lost his mind. The issue is that it is the university's administration that they are accepting those conditions. They shouldn't. They are building something that looks dystopian, out of a Judge Dred movie. The administration should say: no thanks. There are much better ways to deal with density without having to build such a compromised building. The, no window in classrooms, is a very American thing. I have never seen a windowless classroom outside the US. In this case it is dorm rooms.
    • bambax 5y ago
      > The, no window in classrooms, is a very American thing. Also offices. Not something you see often in Europe (not impossible, maybe, but very rare).
    • robbintt 5y ago
      It's ridiculous to use age in this way.
  • dls2016 5y ago
    How is this different than any other billionaire? Perhaps allowing un-elected people to hoard and control such vast resources is simply incompatible with a democratic society... Why is Bezos allowed to squash a tax to address homelessness? Why do Bill and Melinda gates dictate health policy for millions of people? And so on...
  • mdp2021 5y ago
    To the best of my information, the use of that dorm is optional, there are other dorms with different prices and different drawbacks. The idea of "control" there seems completely absurd. Also that «for sport» applied to the conditions for participation is absurd: one only participates to projects one approves.
• PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > But Munger didn’t return the favor. He said McFadden “reacted with his gut like an idiot. He didn’t look at the building intelligently.” In particular, he said, McFadden didn’t examine the models, which, he said, the chancellor would have happily shown him. “Everybody who sees the models goes ape-shit for them,” Munger said. Incredible. This is the language of someone who has been surrounded by yes-men for so long that they’ve completely lost touch with how to be persuasive. He can’t understand how anyone would disagree with his windowless dorm proposal because everyone in his near orbit has showered the idea with praise.
  • CharlieMunger 5y ago
    For decades, Charlie Munger has been world-renowned for his comically blunt phrasing. Join us on Reddit to start learning about Berkshire Hathaway: https://old.reddit.com/r/brkb/ https://old.reddit.com/r/brkb/ Today is Q3 2021 earnings!
    • arthur_sav 5y ago
      Nice try, Charlie Munger
    • differentView 5y ago
      100%?
      • CharlieMunger 5y ago
        The notorious
    • mdp2021 5y ago
      I am not sure what makes you think that that username is respectful, or good practice - it has a direct connotation of impersonation. I have seen dang react to a poster named "Mick Jagger", and I thought posts considered that it was not impossible Daniel could have later received the surprise of a mail with a passport scan and a signed portrait with autographed greetings. In this case, there is little doubt.
• dekhn 5y ago
  I worked at a startup where the CEO thought everybody wanted "light" and put windows all around the offices. It was terrible. Everybody who worked on computers all day had a hard time. When I was in college, I would have killed for a simple room where I could close and lock the door and have no external light pollution.
  • exhaze 5y ago
    Have you considered: 1. joining any one of the other 99.9% of companies where the CEO is not a sun worshipper? 2. if (1) not an option, using blinds?
    • strikelaserclaw 5y ago
      george carlin?
      • exhaze 5y ago
        No, just personal experience. When I worked at Uber, the main office was so big that it meant that large parts of the office were dark. Some teams, like, super critical to the core business and highly compensated paid teams, actually hung a bunch of plants in their area as a way to cope with not seeing sunlight. Someone going on a rant about how miserable they were about having too much sunlight, while at the same time being incapable of applying incredibly common trivial solutions to solve this calamity - I found this quite silly and it made me a bit upset.
    • dekhn 5y ago
      blinds don't work in a large open office. a small number of people want them open, a small number of people want them closed, and the rest of the people just want to get their job done. blinds also don't produce the sort of light I want to work with. My preference would be no natural light, and only indirect diffused lighting for general illumination and point lights where I'm working with my hands.
      • 5y ago
• holdenc 5y ago
  The building has all the charm of a temperature-controlled storage facility, which sadly, is what it seems to be.
  • JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    It’s Southern California. I went to school in Arizona, and pretty much everyone put foil over their dorm-room windows. My sister went to UCSB. Their house had blackout curtains. This building won’t win any architectural awards. But the idea makes sense and the objections don’t stand given the tradeoffs (fewer rooms, multiple students per room and/or higher cost) they would require.
    • LodeOfCode 5y ago
      >tradeoffs (fewer rooms, multiple students per room and/or higher cost) they would require You can increase the house plan from 22 windowed rooms (counting the double room twice) to 32 without changing the shape of the building by moving 4 of the dorm blocks to the other side of the multipurpose room and not having one of the washrooms face outside. That would also reduce the distance from the dorm rooms to the multipurpose room/staircase. Design's just bad. Unrelated to the windows, it's also weird that the bathrooms from adjacent dorm blocks aren't back-to-back so that they could easily share plumbing.
  • Judbudhud 5y ago
    Office buildings have the same layouts with windows at the ends and cubicles in the middle. I doubt the patrons feel stuck in a temperature storage facility. I prefer Munger's layout after looking more into it. https://www.architecturalrecord.com/ext/resources/news/2021/November/USCB-Munger-Hall/UCSB_Munger_NEW_archrecord_900_col_0.jpg https://www.architecturalrecord.com/ext/resources/news/2021/...
    • dboshardy 5y ago
      > I doubt the patrons feel stuck in a temperature storage facility. They also aren't living in a windowless box. They still likely get natural light in their cubicles.
• BurningFrog 5y ago
  My main thought is that with 150,000 Californians sleeping in the streets tonight, all new housing is good housing. Also, the outrage here happened to go viral, which makes the discussion turn stupid.
  • rkk3 5y ago
    Or the many UCSB students who withdraw from college because of housing, or sleep in their cars. https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/greater-la/van-life-street-medicine-shirley-raines/ucsb-housing-students https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/greater-la/van-life-street-m...
  • sudosysgen 5y ago
    Munger is suggesting a more expensive but less durable housing solution. The money was going to make housing anyways, he is using his influence insofar as clout and 17% of the funding to make buildings that most people won't be able to live in for very long, at prices that are higher than normal. It's a loss even on those terms.
• agency 5y ago
  > he expects the 4,500-room building to be copied all over the country Incredible move to make huge claims like this and then, presumably (he’s 97), die before you have the chance to be proven wrong.
• deleted 5y ago
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• bambax 5y ago
  > He said (...) "Nobody minds going into a basement restroom and peeing because there’s no window". We don't mind peeing in a windowless room because we spend so little time there. Why does he think restrooms and bedrooms are the same? Being disingenuous on this level is just being stupid.
• g42gregory 5y ago
  After reading his interview, I feel much better about what Munger says about bitcoin. If he is so wrong here... He also paid for the dorm at the Stanford Law School 15 yrs back. He insisted that the single occupancy rooms for the law students will be very large. The University pushed back saying that neither Stanford, nor students who will pay larger rent, will be able to afford that. Munger said that you could cut these rooms in half later, if you so desire. His argument was that the smaller rooms would be harder to cut in half later. I suppose that’s right.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• bmitc 5y ago
  Munger is something else. His opinions are almost that of a child. One could wager that it's due to his age, but he actually seems pretty sprite, so to speak, for his age, so I think he's just like that. Since the resignation article came out, I've watched some interviews with him, and he has unbridled confidence that the thing he's saying is right, and all the comments fawn over him. It isn't hard to understand how he's gotten to be this way. Some quotes of his: > “You’ve got to get used to the fact that billionaires aren’t the most popular people in our society,” he told MarketWatch. “I’d rather be a billionaire and not be loved by everybody than not have any money.” I honestly struggle to understand what he means by this, but I have a hunch it's not good. > “Everybody loves light and everybody prefers natural light. But it’s a game of tradeoffs,” Munger said in an interview. “If you build a big square building, everything is conveniently near to everybody in the building. If you maximize the light, you get fewer people in the building.” Ahh, the maximal packing version of architecture. > “What I learned was how stupid I was. Imagine taking years to decide that the kids should get their own bedroom.” Plenty of designs allow students their own room. The fact that he considers this a design leap is problematic. > “If this building fails, it will be the first Munger building that fails." No introspection. I think what is the sickest thing is the UCSB Chancellor's comment: > UCSB Chancellor Henry T. Yang has called Munger’s proposal an “inspired and revolutionary” design that will offer “an unprecedented residential experience.” What a sycophant.
  • JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > Plenty of designs allow students their own room. The fact that he considers this a design leap is problematic. I believe the architect, who resigned and wrote the letter he’s reacting to, suggested this as a compromise for getting every room a window.
    • sudosysgen 5y ago
      Of course. If you want to have his vision of a building where students are forced to spend 90% of their waking hours in mixed spaces, and have all of those spaces in the same floor, and have windows in every room, you need to have two students per room. If you go for a traditional design that isn't trying to force students into mixed spaces that are inside the same floor, but instead placing these mixed spaces inside different floors or different buildings, you can have every room in the same building.
• DeathArrow 5y ago
  > But Munger didn’t return the favor. He said McFadden “reacted with his gut like an idiot. Actually taking a place of a qualified professional when you don't know shit, being infatuated and calling a professional who is showing you the mistakes you made, an idiot, makes you look like an idiot. I wouldn't actually say that Munger is an idiot, I don't think an idiot can make that much money. Idiot no, infatuated yes.
  • bambax 5y ago
    You don't have to be an idiot to sometimes act like one.
  • ngc248 5y ago
    You can also be brilliant in some fields and idiotic in other fields
• epivosism 5y ago
  This is the original source of the interview: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-the-tuesday-edition-1.6234150/billionaire-defends-windowless-dorm-rooms-for-california-students-1.6234462 https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-the-tuesd... Some quotes: What would you say to [Denis McFadden] if you had the chance? Well, if he knew more about it, he would have had more correct conclusions. What else does he have to know, in your view? The reason this building is the way it is, is because there are enormous advantages in having a lot of undergraduates conveniently near one another and conveniently near everything else they like to be near. The logical way to do that is to make a building in a big footprint and devote the top floor of it — which is a penthouse floor normally given to rich people, you know, for condos — and give that to the students as their common space, and to put a certain amount of academic space into that gigantic top floor with all the light and air and so forth. And so it's just that it was so novel, he's never seen that done, and he doesn't like it when it's different from what he's used to.
  • jrochkind1 5y ago
    He's trying to get credit for... not giving the top floor of a student doorm to rich people as a penthouse? Are there other student dorms where the top floor is given to rich people for penthouse condos?
    • MichaelZuo 5y ago
      The rules of HN say you should give the most charitable interpretation to another’s comments, not the least. In this case it would be instead of having premium student dorms on the top floor for wealthier students, or rooms for the student dorm administrators, instead every student gets access to that penthouse common space.
      • jrochkind1 5y ago
        It would be interesting if Charlie Munger were an HN commenter!
      • dboshardy 5y ago
• jrochkind1 5y ago
  > “It’s all about the happiness of the students. We want to keep the suicide rate low.” If he's trying to come off as not out of touch... it's not working.
• Judbudhud 5y ago
  There are windows at the ends, so not entirely windowless[1]. The layout is brilliant to be honest and I would have preferred my own space (especially as an introvert) than a traditional dorm room. [1] https://www.architecturalrecord.com/ext/resources/news/2021/November/USCB-Munger-Hall/UCSB_Munger_NEW_archrecord_900_col_0.jpg https://www.architecturalrecord.com/ext/resources/news/2021/...
  • mdp2021 5y ago
    But why not having big windows just above the kitchens? This would provide natural light for the common areas, for the tables which can be used for studying, and for natural light for the bedrooms provided either the door is open or the bedroom door has some "obfuscating glass" part. There are windows only on one side, and that is an extreme waste. If windows were placed on the longer sides, the "natural light" problem would have greatly diminished. (In fact, I would also have placed windows in the bedrooms alongside the perimeter walls. Those who want the window get it, those who do not prioritize them will choose differently and maybe pay for a cheaper room.)
• almost_usual 5y ago
  People want the standard of living everyone had in the US decades ago, it costs much more now. There are more people, more competition, and things are much more expensive. He’s bringing a realistic solution given today’s capacity problems and a bias towards not wanting to share rooms. He’s 97 with nothing to lose and it sounds like he doesn’t care about his legacy. Honestly I think the solution is realistic and people don’t like it because they don’t want to acknowledge their quality of life is in decline when it comes to housing for themselves and their children.
  • whimsicalism 5y ago
    And we don't build things anymore.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  • rsj_hn 5y ago
    > People want the standard of living everyone had in the US decades ago, it costs much more now. I think you are right. But all the CPI data and real income data says people are much richer than 40 years ago. And as someone who has spent a lot of time digging through the methodology of these time series, I don't see any bias or obvious error that should make me suspect the government data. Then the next step is to say "yes, a car of today is much better than a car sold in 1980, so in real terms, maybe cars are cheaper but you can't buy those cheap cars now." But if you really think about it, that's not true, either. You can still buy cheap cars, for example used cars, that will last longer as they are better built. You can still buy cheap housing, just in a different location. Remember there were no mobile phones in the 1980s, no internet, no personal computers, etc. But if you want to live like someone in the 1980s, you can do that and have more money left over than someone would have in the 1980s. So you point me to one thing and I will show you how, with today's income, you can get it at same or better quality and have more money left over than if it was 1980. Except healthcare, you can't get the cheaper version of healthcare from the 1980s (since that would be illegal). But other than that, you really can, and you can't pin the entire difference on healthcare. The best I can think of is a vague notion that people have lost the skills to be able to live like they did 40 years ago, possibly because being able to live like that requires some community support, and we don't have that support anymore. As one data point, take the Amish, who live like they did 200 years ago. And they are not poorer. But they make sacrifices to live like that as an entire community. If an individual tried to do it on their own, they would fail. For one thing, no one would marry them once they found out about the lack of electricity and 18th Century amenities. But I'm not too happy with this characterization, either. It's something that still puzzles me.
• beanadult 5y ago
  Perfect is the enemy of good. Munger is a devoted rationalist and student of history. His company has 360,000 employees. He is not some idiot who fails to understand how to create spaces for people to be successful in. Here he is offering a way to alleviate a housing crisis at a school with a 30% acceptance rate. Charlie comes from a generation of people who were capable of solving hard problems. And we need this kind of leadership and lesson. When we spit on these acts of charity, what will be the result? Our ineffectual politicians will agree and limit the scope of what is being built here. Less students will be housed and those unhoused will be forgotten. What’s offered here is more students housed in private rooms if we can accept giving up a private window is ok. I would give up a window if it meant my dorm mate didn’t have to masturbate next to me at night. Pull your head out of you butts and start addressing these problems like adults. If not this then what?
• anyfactor 5y ago
  I like Munger but I am certainly not one of those worships him nor one of those who calls him Bill Gates' lawyer (those who knows knows). Reading through the article and the comments, I can only say it is his money and it should be a wakeup call for the college and the state of California. He has a vision of where and how he wants to spent his money and you can either accept it or not. Super rich people don't donate, they invest in social causes where their views are reflected in the long term and the goals are often not obvious. This is a very long discussion but that is how I see it. Nothing is stopping the college to move around funds and having a tighter grip on the administrative expenses so they can invest not wisely but rather opinionatedly into projects. The mounting student debt on one side and the hypocratic song and dance to please billionaires for handouts is simply ridiculous.
  • smnrchrds 5y ago
    Is it his money though? I think he is putting in 200 millions and the university is footing another 1 billion.
    • anyfactor 5y ago
      I am not sure he threw an exact figure but it is his money regardless of what percent of the investment it represents. He gets to call the shots of how his money get used and he doesn't need to have it authorized by a board. He isn't controlling the plan but he has some rightful authority over the plan.
      • smnrchrds 5y ago
        And the university doesn't? The protests are directed at the university, asking it not to fund this project. The architect who resigned in protest resign from UCSB, not from Charlie Munger's employ.
        • anyfactor 5y ago
          Funding a project is very straight forward. There are three things to cover 1. Who pays 2. What do they wants 3. What is the impact. Munger pays some money and he wants the building to be built in a certain way. University pays some money, and they have many direct and indirect things they want from it. Also the university is accountable to many more people than Munger. Munger is just person with limited/no accountability and he is very exact in his demand. On the other hand, the university is accountable to the trustees and the students. There is a value for simple and exact demands with money being handed over to someone with a goal. If you take a step back and see this entire engagement as an investment with social goals and not a billionaire donating money the nuances the whole ordeal becomes very clear.
• Kaibeezy 5y ago
  As a hundred-thousandaire with an architecture degree and my own don’t-give-a-rat’s-ass ‘tude, I’m here to say: this building is not fit for human habitation, Charlie Munger is a fool, and the UCSB chancellor will be lucky to get part of his tongue back out of Munger’s sphincter. For a billion $ he could have built a lovely ‘academical village’ with every kind of amenity and a wide variety of rooms for every preference. This is a tenement, a warehouse for living people, in the worst 1900 Lower East Side sense, minus some of the fire and sanitation risk. Suitable for vermin, not scholars. See also Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives, 1890. A citizens’ movement resulted in the organization of a Board of Health and the adoption of the “Tenement-House Act” of 1867, the first step toward remedial legislation. ... The dark bedroom fell under the ban first. In that year the Board ordered the cutting of more than forty-six thousand windows in interior rooms, chiefly for ventilation—for little or no light was to be had from the dark hallways. Air-shafts were unknown. The saw had a job all that summer; by early fall nearly all the orders had been carried out. Not without opposition; obstacles were thrown in the way of the officials on the one side by the owners of the tenements, who saw in every order to repair or clean up only an item of added expense to diminish their income from the rent; on the other side by the tenants themselves, who had sunk, after a generation of unavailing protest, to the level of their surroundings, and were at last content to remain there. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/45502/45502-h/45502-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/45502/45502-h/45502-h.htm
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • pphysch 5y ago
    Did you get your architecture degree in 1890 as well? High density human habitats are infinitely better with modern technology. Central AC and dynamic electrical lighting, for starters.
    • Kaibeezy 5y ago
      SPF. What could go wrong?
  • nouveaux 5y ago
• fabianhjr 5y ago
  How is it that the US with some of the highest tuition and rent in the world can't deliver half the quality of Danish public universities? For example: Tietgenkollegiet. It has great shared spaces, great rooms, amazing green spaces and water features, and has bike infrastructure and public transit readily available.
  • Kranar 5y ago
    Mostly because of accessibility. Danish universities, while being free, are much less accessible than the U.S and also lower than the OECD average: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cac https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cac
  • yeahwhatever10 5y ago
    US universities have all these amenities, while also serving 40k+ students. How many students attend a Danish public university?
    • Ichthypresbyter 5y ago
      Copenhagen University has 38,000 students.
      • dagw 5y ago
        And Tietgenkollegiet mentioned above can house less than 400 of them. The fundamental difference is that the University of Copenhagen (like most European Universities) don't take on the responsibility of housing students. For various reasons many US Universities also provide the actual housing the students live in.
        • deleted 5y ago
          [deleted]
    • sudosysgen 5y ago
      The university of Amsterdam has 32k+ students. So, around as much. Generally countries have universities of similar sizes but fewer of them.
• hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
  I realize this is somewhat tangential to the topic, but related questions: 1. The whole project is expected to cost $1.5 billion. Does that strike anyone else as insane? That's like 330k per room, and these rooms are really tiny with no windows. I get the point is to have tons of more inviting common spaces, but 1.5 billion just seems nuts to me. Especially since Munger decreed much of the building will be assembled off site in "pods". 2. All the beds are at the back of the room, essentially "walled in" on 3 sides. I'm too tall for a normal twin or full size mattress, which is what these images look like. Normally that's not much of an issue because I let my feet hang off the bed. I would feel super squished in this bed.
  • Dma54rhs 5y ago
    I think this building has more than just these pods, eg. open space, the shop he is talking about etc. So much more real estate than just rooms get covered with this money.
  • smorgusofborg 5y ago
    > 2. All the beds are at the back of the room, essentially "walled in" on 3 sides. The rooms are 10x7 so these beds would need to be twin longs like (all?) US dorms.
  • nouveaux 5y ago
    Given the high construction cost everywhere, this is not surprising. I had a friend with a backyard slopping down a hill. He got some quotes to put in a deck and redo his yard. No one quoted anything less than 200k.
    • sudosysgen 5y ago
      Oh come on. Yes construction costs increased and then started to go back down, but if no one quoted less 200K for a deck and a yard either his yard is the size of a plantation or the quotes were simply from people who had better things to do and were short staffed. You know, a problem that doesn't apply to billion dollar construction.
• c3534l 5y ago
  I actually agree with him here. Windows are nice, but by eliminating them he was able to provide many other amenities. These are dorms, not luxury apartments. Better than the bunk bed and concrete walls you usually get in college.
• ur-whale 5y ago
  > Munger said he based the dorm’s design on the Unité d'Habitation in Marseille by Le Corbusier. Ugh, that is one of the ugliest, soul crushing building I've ever visited. I went to see it on a trip to Marseilles, dragged there by my art major girlfriend of the time who was into Le Corbusier big time, including his furniture designs. Much like his sofas which - while stylish - are entirely unfit for any kind of sitting on longer than a minute, Le Corbusier's buildings are the ultimate exercise in not caring for the people who will live in it.
  • mdp2021 5y ago
    I must say that I agree about the paradox: Le Corbusier called his designs "functional machines" and they require much modification to fit the purpose.
• rasz 5y ago
  Nobody needs windows - says the guy with a window in the background of his TV interview.
• kyleblarson 5y ago
  His money his call. I'm sure there are plenty of other colleges who would accept his terms.
  • postingawayonhn 5y ago
    He's only contributing $200m of the total $1.5b construction cost.
• retrocryptid 5y ago
  Mr. Munger has clearly read J. G. Ballard's "Highrise" and taken it as an inspiration instead of the social critique it is.
• bleuchase 5y ago
  This is the architectural equivalent of Soylent.
• CharlieMunger 5y ago
  Here is a good documentary if you want to understand Charlie Munger: https://youtu.be/bx5ThG6HyZk https://youtu.be/bx5ThG6HyZk He is widely respected and that is well-justified.
• glup 5y ago
  Risk $1.3b on an unproven design by an eccentric amateur that has some pretty clear shortcomings in "user experience" for the *vast majority* of users? I can't believe UCSB leadership is still seriously considering this rather than seeing what a risk this is. Pro tip: build some condos with windows.
• lcuff 5y ago
  One of the things that I'm betting is true here is that most of us don't have any _detailed_ information about the building. Charlie Munger says: I never allow myself to have an opinion on anything that I don't know the other side's argument better than they do.” Whether he always adheres to this or not, I don't know, but as someone who has become one of the wealthiest men in the world, I have to believe he has excellent judgement. As for windowless rooms: Monastics live in windowless rooms. Teenagers sometimes prefer shutting out all natural light. Most of the work environments I worked in for 40 years didn't have windows where I could look out. Everybody that lives in this dorm will have some level of choice as to whether to be there or not. The building is not windowless, it has (many) windowless rooms. Part of the tradeoff is that each student gets a room of their own. Sharing a space with someone you don't like sucks, I can say from my own experience.
  • Kaibeezy 5y ago
    Plenty of 2D and 3D drawings have been posted. Extrapolating from (and distilling to) these sorts of representations in order to understand built spaces is the core competency of architects.
    • lcuff 5y ago
      Well, seeing how the building is going to be when built, and knowing the reasoning for the design is two different things, yes? He may have given an interview, but this is hardly a full explication of the reasoning behind the decisions. We have to know the reasoning before we can agree or disagree with it. It's not as if this is some "oops, I hadn't thought about the lack of windows."
      • Kaibeezy 5y ago
        He’s explained plenty in the interview and other news reports. Quite intentionally plopping this fatuous, self-gratifying excrescence onto the UCSB campus to a laughtrack of joyous encouragement from the panic-desperate “leadership” of a public-yet-autonomous “institution”. Viva Pruitt-Igoe!
• a9h74j 5y ago
  Christopher Alexandar listed IIRC "light on two sides of a room" as a design pattern. He also went into detail about the need for "intimacy gradient" in housing designs -- another design pattern. Room for tradeoffs. If you want to talk about harm reduction, he also suggested a case against high-rises with million-dollar views. Apparently above the ca 12th floor or so, occupants mental health began to suffer. Perhaps too removed from ground-level experience.
• bjourne 5y ago
  Shouldn't there some kind of lower threshold for how badly you can treat people? I could offer people €10/hour for peeing in their mouths and some people would defend it saying "Yeah, well, I'm sure some people would prefer that over being homeless or starving to death!" Shoving students into windowless prison cells is mean and cruel. Especially when you yourself would never ever live in anything resembling that.
• jancsika 5y ago
  Having that much money combined with that much hubris must be similar to having a disease that permanently affects your ability to reason. For example-- I was going to suggest that if Munger believed his idea is so glaringly positive, he should give nearly all of his money away and then pitch the idea. Hell, he is 97-- what does he really need to guarantee comfort in the years he has left? But of course that's the reasoning of an outsider. If I possessed a gazillion dollars, who knows-- maybe I'd shoot it all at some bone-headed campaign to teach every citizen how to use GPG-encrypted email correctly. Perhaps the one factor keeping most of us from achieving maximum assholery is we run out of gas before it happens.
• rapnie 5y ago
  Archive link for those who get thrown an 'accept unknown GDPR policy' notice: https://web.archive.org/web/20211106164904/https://www.architecturalrecord.com/articles/15378-exclusive-interview-with-billionaire-charlie-munger-on-controversial-ucsb-dorm https://web.archive.org/web/20211106164904/https://www.archi...
• numair 5y ago
  Continuing on my last comment regarding this pile of plutocratic insanity[1], I ask Munger’s supporters to please cite references to support their implicit assertion that humans don’t need natural light in their living spaces. I really want to see that evidence. The people in charge of the University of California system should be fired for wasting public employees’ time and taxpayers’ dollars on this weird-rich-guy-hobby idiocy. If you’re a California taxpayer, please remember that you’re going to end up double-paying for Munger’s delusion: you have to cover the tax revenue that’s lost in his “donation,” and you have to pay for the time that your public servants are spending on this mess. Oh yeah, and then you’ll pay for it over and over with the under-funded pensions collected on the time spent working on this thing... 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29105435 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29105435
  • aaomidi 5y ago
    > Munger’s supporters Billionaires shouldn't have supporters between working class people I swear. It's like Stockholm syndrome on a national scale. Dude can literally own entire countries and islands, no one should relate to him lol.
    • mdp2021 5y ago
      The presence of money or lack thereof is to you a surefire way to judge the quality of a man?! Because, really, some people see the human person behind the marginal pile of money or lack thereof, and look at the quality. And of these, some like, some dislike, appreciate, disagree, sympathize, misunderstand...
      • aaomidi 5y ago
        Yes. Good people don't get to be billionaires.
        • mdp2021 5y ago
          Any proof to propose?
• cletus 5y ago
  This monstrosity totals at around 1.68 million square feet [1], which places the cost at around $900/sq ft. New York City for various reasons has some of the highest construction costs in the world. Residential high-rise construction costs are estimated at $562/sq ft [2]. Obviously there is variance in building costs based on the quality of finishings, ceiling height, facilities, etc. I guarantee you, you'd prefer to live in a modern residential high-rise pretty much anywhere in the country rather than in these windowless cells (sorry, "rooms"). Why is this so high? Doesn't UCSB already own the land so this isn't a factor? There are a ton of problems with this building. I mean windowless is fine until the AC fails or is inadequate or there's just a power failure. These are I believe arranged in suites of 10 that are "private" with some common facilities. 10 is rather high. I know people who had a similar arrangement with groups as small as 4 and it was a problem. This just strikes me as pure ego from someone who is never told "no" who wants to enforce his view on the world so that even more sycophants can tell him how amazing he is. And then there's the university that doesn't care about anything other than the donation check clearing. Student housing simply shouldn't be this way. [1]: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/uc-santa-barbara-mega-dorm-munger-hall-rcna4401 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/uc-santa-barbara-mega-dorm-mung... [2]: https://www.constructiondive.com/news/construction-costs-in-new-york-city-are-the-highest-worldwide/524054/#:~:text=Turner%20%26%20Townsend%20evaluated%20construction%20costs,cost%20%24302%20per%20square%20foot https://www.constructiondive.com/news/construction-costs-in-....
  • nouveaux 5y ago
    UC Berkeley is building a new dorm at a cost of $388,601 per bed. It will cost $300m for 772 beds. I couldn't find the actual square footage but it did say that it is 14 stories and there is a 17000 sq ft retail/commercial space. So using that as a _very_ rough estimate, the total estimate is 238,000 sq ft, which comes out to $1260/sq ft to build. Due to earthquakes, building in California should be more expensive than New York. I dont have any numbers to back that up though. https://www.berkeleyside.org/2021/07/07/berkeley-new-dorm-helen-diller-safier-donation https://www.berkeleyside.org/2021/07/07/berkeley-new-dorm-he...
• giantrobot 5y ago
  I hadn't been following this too closely but now looking at the designs it looks more like an office building then a traditional dorm. I can see the logic and efficiency in the design. A lot of dorms I've seen would end up with long interior hallways with bathrooms and shared spaces at the ends. While each room had a windows and an exterior wall the amenities would be far away. Some even only had common areas (kitchens etc) on the ground floor. Rooms with immediately shared common areas make them more accessible. Multiple shared areas makes for less overcrowding at busy times of the day. Kitchen areas close by rooms also means students aren't overheating their rooms with small refrigerators to keep their beer cold. The common rooms at the end of the hall on each floor also makes for more easily accessible non-room space to live in. So long as the dorm rooms themselves are kept single occupancy there's always a private study space available in addition to shared study spaces like in the library and wherever. If you wanted to get a similar number of rooms in the same areal footprint but give everyone a window it seems like you'd need a central courtyard. But then the building couldn't be more than a few stories tall or the lower floors would be in constant shade except for noon a few days a year. So you'd fit fewer students in the same plot. Central common spaces with dorms lining the exterior walls would also have lower density and the large common areas would still need a bunch of interior walls for sound abatement lest the floor have a constant din of noise. A gruff billionaire and soundbite headlines are the only thing driving this "story" in my opinion. The design looks sound and can pack a lot of people comfortably into the lot available for the building. I'm not an architect so I don't know if there's some big detail I'm missing.
• xlaacid 5y ago
  Those are prison cells, period. The fact that they don't have natural sunlight means Munger doesn't have the first clue about circadian biology and how light affects the brain,mood, wakefulness, and sleep. This is a great example of how people with extreme wealth are given carte blanche simply because they have money, and no brains. As a former architectural student, albeit, high school, and professional sleep researcher (12 yrs), I hope this never gets built.
• seabird 5y ago
  As much as it would be incredibly funny for Munger to be wrong after talking so much shit, I really don't think that he is. There's a lot of whining about "muh windows" and "you live in a cell". That's cool, but there's plenty of windows available to you when you leave your room, and a lot of people would rather have a small room without a window that's properly private than a marginally bigger one that you share with an asshole roommate. It's not perfect, but it's enough for this job, and I would take it in a heartbeat over a lot of the options that were available at the university I went to.
  • bayindirh 5y ago
    Did you ever lived or worked in a windowless room (or a room whose window doesn't directly take sunlight or see anything besides a wall) for any amount of time?
    • raldi 5y ago
      The idea for this dorm is that the students wouldn’t do that. They would go to their bunk to sleep and dress and have sex, and spend all the rest of their time in huge, luxuriously-windowed common spaces.
      • xg15 5y ago
        Except that the luxuriously-windowed common spaces (two for the 64 occupants of one floor) are a fair bit away from the rooms. The common kitchens that connect each 8-room group don't have windows either.
    • seabird 5y ago
      Yep, you're describing the offices and schools I've worked and studied in for the last 5 or 6 years. 8-16 hours a day in rooms without sunlight. It rarely crosses my mind. I can say that I would in a heartbeat, no questions asked, choose a single-person room with no windows that I only sleep and study in, over a shared room where I have minimal privacy and I run the risk of having my sleep schedule be completely trashed by an inconsiderate roommate. This design is asking you to walk out of your room if you want sunlight. It's not ideal. Some students would rather not. They're doing sardine-packing here as a matter of necessity and there's going to be some tradeoffs, but frankly this is a pretty minor one.
• jleyank 5y ago
  I didn’t see “introvert” mentioned, but having 8 people stuffed together means that the loud ones win until the introverts just flip out. Guess they want such undesirables going to a different school or living somewhere else. Mixing people with different level of academic rigor will be messy and inserting anybody with a stereo or musical instruments will lead to physical harm.
  • borski 5y ago
    Sort of - everyone having a single rather than doubles helps with that too. Introverts can retreat, as needed, to their, albeit tiny and windowless, rooms.
  • raldi 5y ago
    The whole point of this dorm is that singles are way too hard for UCSB students to get, and triples are much too common. This dorm would be all singles, and would eliminate the need for any triples campus-wide. Introverts would be able to choose to either live here and get a single, or go for any of the other existing housing options on campus.
• abeppu 5y ago
  Munger has clearly been very involved with this project. I'm not gonna try to wade into the windows vs not thing. I can see how there's a trade-off especially given that having a single-person room is something of a luxury for college students. But I do want to question whether it's appropriate for philanthropists to be so involved in what they fund, or whether it should still be considered philanthropy at that point. Economists sometimes talk about the inefficiency of gift-giving. Compared with the amount expended, perhaps substantially less value will be captured by the receiver. This seems like the billionaire equivalent of giving someone a painting you did, if you're not especially renowned as an artist. If the UC system had received an equivalent amount of funding from another source would they have chosen to spend it all on this building? Or perhaps, would some have gone to scholarships, and some to more faculty, and some to a misguided new institute for whatever? Even if they had wanted to build a dorm, had Munger not been involved, would they have preferred to go in a very different direction? Munger gets to put his name on this thing, but it sounds like he also enjoys getting to play architect or designer but without having to compete on the merits of his skills in those fields. He gets to build a thing the way he wants, put his name on it, and put it on UC land. And if we're having a conversation about how in this specific instance it may be out of line with actual benefits to the future residents, then can we also talk about how it's maybe in general a bad idea to keep congratulating rich people for pushing their personal vanity/hobby projects onto the public and calling it benevolence? Meanwhile, Munger has been vocal in opposition to the idea of introducing a wealth tax, or a tax on corporate stock buybacks, and has suggested that the capital gains tax is too high rather than too low. To Munger, even at a public school, private entities should decide how much to spend and how to spend it.
• roughly 5y ago
  > Munger said he based the dorm’s design on the Unité d'Habitation in Marseille by Le Corbusier. Well there’s your problem. Le Corbusier’s designs were beautiful dystopias.
• dqpb 5y ago
  Here's my question: For an interior windowless room, what's the expected CO2 concentration after someone's been in there for 8 hours? I'd bet $1000 their HVAC system will be inadequate.
  • PhantomGremlin 5y ago
    I'd bet $1000 their HVAC system will be inadequate. Yeah, in the "age of Covid" there are few things as stupid as sharing HVAC with 4,499 other people.
• xg15 5y ago
  > Once he decided that every student would have a single room, he realized, “We had a window shortage. So we just copied what Disney Cruises did. The way Disney does it, the window is really a television set. Those work beautifully on the ships. But I wanted to have a spectrum of sunlight, so with a curtain hanging over it you couldn’t tell if it was artificial or real. I figured out how to do that. Programming the lights to copy the sun was too expensive. So we will give the students knobs, and they can have whatever light they want. Real windows don’t do that.” So just to recap: The rooms neither give you a sense where you are in the building, nor any sense of time of day. You wake up and literally are unable to tell if it's day or night.
  • CameronNemo 5y ago
    you can bring your own led lights. they have those anti seasonal depression lamps. can an arduino or other act as a dimmer? sprinkle in a sun worshipping library (e.g. astral in python, or rip it out of the redshift code for C) and you have a light that mimicks the sun.
    • xg15 5y ago
      I know you can build or buy such a lamp. However, this requires a lot of effort on the side of individual students. Not everyone is a techie and can build/program this. Many might not know about those products or understand why they should buy one.
• omosubi 5y ago
  Why weren't light courts or courtyards considered here? Someone asked rem Koolhaas a while ago what his residence looks like and while he tried to dodge the question he ended up answering "a 19th century victorian apartment" seems like the same sort of ego at work here
• 23B1 5y ago
  Has anyone asked students, current or prospective, what they think?
• mdavis6890 5y ago
  It's easy to criticize what someone ELSE is doing - much harder to do it yourself. To me it seams like Munger has offered up a nice solution given the incentives and constraints that exist in this particular case. This doesn't mean it's perfect, or that it would be best in all other scenarios - just that it's a very reasonable compromise that optimizes overall good for the students in this particular case. Perhaps someone else, rather than criticizing, would offer up a detailed alternative, and then subject that to the scrutiny of students, faculty, environmental and zoning boards, finance, etc - and see where that gets them. My guess is not very far. It's likely that all of the "better" options folks are suggestion have already been thoroughly considered and rejected for good reasons in favor of this option.
• cannabis_sam 5y ago
  Let’s put old billionaires in windowless dorms instead.
• dave333 5y ago
  They could do this a lot cheaper just by stacking some of the glut of empty shipping containers in a huge block.