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jp1
11-3-21, 6:52am
Apparently UC Santa Barbara is on a path to building what to me sounds absolutely horrible, a dorm where 94% of the rooms have no windows. The purpose being to encourage people to spend more time in the public spaces. I read that as ‘make the rooms unpleasant enough so that people won’t want to be in them.’ $200 million for the project is being donated by Charles Munger, who has put strings on the donation that absolutely nothing about the design change. At least he’s enough of a believer in the project that he’s willing to have his name on the building.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/uc-santa-barbara-mega-dorm-munger-hall-rcna4401
Tybee
11-3-21, 7:21am
I am trying to get my head around how that room would have felt when I went off to college. I was a lot more adaptable in those days.
Tradd
11-3-21, 7:52am
Ugh
iris lilies
11-3-21, 8:47am
We have a window-less bathroom, and I don't even like to put pets in there for any time longer than an hour.
LDAHL
11-3-21, 8:54am
I once tried to interest my wife in building an underground house. She vigorously refused. She insisted on natural light and thought it would be too quiet, “like a tomb”. I lost that one.
nswef
11-3-21, 12:06pm
I would imagine deep depression for many students.
JaneV2.0
11-3-21, 12:44pm
Given a choice between windowless solitude and socially-engineered herding, I'd learn to embrace the room with artificial light and ventilation, I suppose. This reminds me of the roundly-scorned group projects being foisted on students these days. What do these educators have against individuals, anyway?
catherine
11-3-21, 12:53pm
I once tried to interest my wife in building an underground house. She vigorously refused. She insisted on natural light and thought it would be too quiet, “like a tomb”. I lost that one.

Reminds me of that old movie--a great concept, OK movie--Blast from the Past--where Sissy Spacek and Christopher Walken raised Brandon Fraser in a 1960s-era bomb shelter.

As far as Munger's design: I think it's dreadful. "Prison" sounds like an apt description.
LDAHL
11-3-21, 1:20pm
Reminds me of that old movie--a great concept, OK movie--Blast from the Past--where Sissy Spacek and Christopher Walken raised Brandon Fraser in a 1960s-era bomb shelter.

As far as Munger's design: I think it's dreadful. "Prison" sounds like an apt description.

Every once in a while, you read about someone renovating a bomb shelter as a residency. Some of them look pretty nice to me.

I still think there are a lot of pluses to an underground or earth berm house; but it was one of those arguments that would only be resolved through divorce.

Back at the dear old U, I lived in a drafty cinder block monstrosity thrown together after the war. The pampered students of today would consider it a human rights violation, but it served its purpose.
Tybee
11-3-21, 2:12pm
Reminds me of that old movie--a great concept, OK movie--Blast from the Past--where Sissy Spacek and Christopher Walken raised Brandon Fraser in a 1960s-era bomb shelter.

As far as Munger's design: I think it's dreadful. "Prison" sounds like an apt description.

I loved that movie, because they kept pulling out all these stock certificates and he had money to spend in the present day.
bae
11-3-21, 3:05pm
Looks perfect for the students to sit in their cell, strap on their Oculus, and live in the metaverse.
bae
11-3-21, 3:06pm
Every once in a while, you read about someone renovating a bomb shelter as a residency. Some of them look pretty nice to me.


I have so many times *almost* bought a decommissioned missile site to turn into the Blast From The Past palace, but even divorce has not got me to getting it done :-)
iris lilies
11-3-21, 4:13pm
DH’s cousin, Eric Breitenmoser in this article, owns a WWII bunker in Switzerland. It is huge, a huge cement bunker.

https://www.naratek.com/en/impact-enabler/2021/alpine-battleship-as-modern-data-bunker.php
rosarugosa
11-3-21, 4:13pm
I would imagine deep depression for many students.

At least they won't be jumping out the windows!
LDAHL
11-3-21, 4:52pm
I have so many times *almost* bought a decommissioned missile site to turn into the Blast From The Past palace, but even divorce has not got me to getting it done :-)

My plan was much more modest. A series of cylinders buried in a hillside. No so much a prepper ark as a three-bedroom ranch with a really low profile and a decent wine cellar.
iris lilies
11-3-21, 6:12pm
At least they won't be jumping out the windows!
Haha an astute observation.
Chicken lady
11-3-21, 10:04pm
Um, fire?
jp1
11-3-21, 11:12pm
Um, fire?

Presumably it’s designed like a high rise. Pressurized internal fire stairs and sprinklers throughout. At ten stories tall it’s too tall for a ladder truck anyway. They only reach seven stories.
chrisgermany
11-4-21, 6:48am
It reminds me of the inner rooms without real windows on cruise ships.