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.
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...
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.
> 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.
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.
And all of the top reviews complain about the lack of windows. Even the positive reviews complain about the windows.
The top review is titled “No windows, no way”. The second review says it was great until COVID hit and they had to actually spend time in the windowless rooms.
Most of the positives seem to be about things like location and convenient access to other things, which has nothing to do with the architecture. The architecture is listed as the downside.
> Imagine how much praise it would receive if it had windows?
It would also be more expensive and have fewer rooms. In all likelihood, that would result in multiple people per room. All that makes the result unclear.
It's simple physics. If every bedroom has a window, the building needs to have a higher surface area to volume ratio.
The proposed building looks like a Borg Cube (maybe that's why architects don't like it?), but that's only possible because most bedrooms are not on exterior walls. Instead, each bedroom is part of a suite that opens to a common area that does have a real window!
If you take a look at the footprint of residential buildings, you'll notice that they are almost never square. In fact, they have a fairly high aspect ratio.
In the case of Santa Barbara, the major constraint is land. If you wanted to house the same number of students, you'd either need to make the building 2-3x taller or use 2-3x as much land. Otherwise the buildings would be so close that the real windows would get no natural light (but, hey, at least you'd have a real window).
Yes, it's not a problem to have a higher surface area to volume ratio. You can make a not so tall building with a budget of 330 000$ per room, by putting common area in the center.
The issue is not the aspect ratio. The issue is that Charlie is obsessed with having every room connected to a common space which is the one with natural light. It would be trivial to have a slightly higher aspect ratio, maybe one or two more floors, and have the common areas in the center.
As you can see, the surface area problem even worse!
Each bedroom is 8x10 feet, but the building is only 87 * 4 by 200 * 2 feet. That's 1496 linear feet of exterior wall. That's only enough for 187 exterior rooms per floor, while the design calls for approximately 512 (8 rooms per suite * 8 suites per house * 8 housed per floor).
> It would be trivial to have a slightly higher aspect ratio, maybe one or two more floors
You'd need to add not just "one or two" more floors, but increase the residential part of the building from 9 floors to 24!. Even if you made very narrow (6 foot) rooms, it would still require 18 floors.
> You can make a not so tall building with a budget of 330 000$ per room
And they're paying over $1 million per bathroom! I consider this a fairly disingenuous comment because the article is clear that the building includes space for other things like convertible classrooms and rec areas.
As a direct critique of the architecture, it's easy to shit on the building for lacking windows. But when taking a students budget and other tradeoffs into account it's actually one of the best places to live on campus.
Seems to me that HN users in this thread and UCS students aren't able to look past those tradeoffs.
As a student, I'm perfectly happy to have my own room with no windows. This is because (at least pre-covid when the facility was built), there's tons of stuff to do on campus and I won't be in my dorm room all that much anyway. The location is amazing. Even as an antisocial person, you get your own private space, which is something that many dorms don't provide on a budget. Yeah the lack of windows sucks, but I can live with it if it means I get my own private space and easy fast access to all the other things I need.
> Seems to me that HN users in this thread and UCS students aren't able to look past those tradeoffs.
It seems like HN users (and architects) aren't even considering that those tradeoffs exist. It's like they want to design a building without any regard to land use, cost or how many students it serves.
I see no acknowledgement that:
1. UCSB is located on a narrow coastal plain, where land is at a premium.
2. Giving every bedroom a window implies blowing up the surface area/volume ratio of the building (so build it taller or build 2x or 3x as many buildings).
3. A bunch of long, skinny buildings requires more land (and probably more $) to house the same number of students as one borg cube.
Additionally, much of the criticism fails to acknowledge the actual design of the building.
Yes, each bedroom does not have a real window, but bedrooms are grouped into suites of 8, with a study area, kitchen and bathrooms... and that common space does have real windows!. An additional common area on each floor, shared among 8 suites, spanning the width of the building, has a wall covered with real windows!.
I agree that the borg cube is ugly, but I'd like to see the proposed alternative. The alternative needs to house the same number of students on the same amount of land and cost roughly the same amount. I don't think you can do the first two without building something 35 stories tall (more than twice the height of Storke Tower). And then you'll get the predictable comments about the "Manhattanization" of SB.
> This is the floorplan I could find. Where are the windows on the suites of house 4?
I stand corrected! I was going by the floorplan on the original article, which apparently didn't show the full building. You'd think that someone trying to make the point that it's a bad design would show the parts of the design that are actually bad.
> Why? Did god gave us the number of students this university must accept? Sometimes the correct answer is that the question is wrong.
Sure, that's a fair point, but then the problem isn't the building or its patron, so the criticism is misplaced.
This is a uniquely weird US PoV. Everywhere else in the world, university students as the adults they are, live in housing much like that of all other adults, maybe in self-organized groups. The whole problem starts with dorms.
Three of the 7 review "highlights" are positive and related directly to the design: "everyone gets their own bathroom", "spacious living area", and "best place to live in terms of value".
Those living there who don't like it really don't like it. They could be a minority, that rating could be accurate otherwise... but I don't necessarily trust internet crowd ratings.
That site has hundreds of people quoted and I don't trust the journalist to pick a representative sample, vs. focusing on the most negative or click-worthy takes.
Up to you. The article, though, also quotes a student who likes living there, and mentions the same 8.8 out of 10 rating that you mention. Perhaps that's just part of it's plan to appear balanced while actually misleading us.
Does anyone know if this dorm has the simulated window feature that the UCSB dorm has? No mention of it in the reviews that I can find so I'm guessing not. Either way, I wonder how far that goes to addressing the downside of no windows?
The Michigan building is a lot smaller and each bedroom has a private bathroom.
I'm not sure how I would respond if I were considering living in a windowless room for a bit less than a year. I think I might not like the idea, but I probably wouldn't make the lack of a window the only consideration.
There is a BIG difference, the existing high rated Michigan apartments linked do have windows in the living rooms, just the bedrooms are windowless[1]. While the new project have completely windowless apartments.
It’s Southern California. I went to school in Arizona. Pretty much everyone put foil over their dorm-room windows. My sister went to UCSB. Their house had blackout curtains.
As an adult, I adore windows. As a teenager and young adult, I wanted to sleep in after drinking too much or pulling an all nighter. (I passed this to a friend, an architect in Arizona. They think Munger’s spot on.)
It’s not a windowless building. It’s a building with windowless units. If someone really wants a window, they can get one. (Also, it’s UCSB. Most students move off campus after freshman year.)
Went to school at ASU, lived in Manzanita dorm. Can confirm, we had foil on our windows, too… but as much because the old building had weak air conditioning, though the sun could be brutal. More recent buildings at ASU have window treatments for variable sun conditions.
> More recent buildings at ASU have window treatments for variable sun conditions
Manzanita and Barrett. The latter, new. (And everyone had hacked the air conditioner controls to override the limiter on week one.) Still had foil. It’s hot and bright and even with dark skin I was frequently sunburned.
And this is the post of someone who doesn't know anything about Charlie Munger. If you think he has "been surrounded by yes-men for so long", I have some news for you. He doesn't manage anyone.
> And this is the post of someone who doesn't know anything about Charlie Munger.
“It’s okay actually because he always talks like this” is one of the weirdest arguments in this thread.
Why can’t we call out bad behavior just because it comes from a specific person?Bad behavior is bad behavior. Being consistent about being bad doesn’t make it good. I don’t understand why anything thinks this is okay just because it comes from a specific personality.
> If you think he has "been surrounded by yes-men for so long", I have some news for you. He doesn't manage anyone.
He’s dangling $1.2 billion dollars in front of people to get them to do his bidding with this construction. I really don’t understand how you think that’s less of an incentive than giving someone a paycheck a fraction of that magnitude.
The people he talks to are CEOs of architecture and engineering firms and university chancellors. If you think those are yes-men, I have more news for you. He's an investor. He doesn't have employees. He may have a few assistants but that's typical of any high-level (or even mid) professional. The yes-men bit about Munger is the last thing I would associate with Munger.
Weird take. The distinction you make between investor and manager completely ignores the context: he invests in yes-men, and doesn't invest in people who he deems idiots because they disagree with him. The common feature of 'manager' and 'investor' is that they have power.
Please name the yes-men. From which companies? Berkshire has a list of companies in its annual reports so I'm assuming you obviously can name the yes-men from your extensive research on Charlie Munger. This would be breaking news in the investment world and something that Warren Buffett doesn't know about.
What bad behavior? He says what he thinks instead of bs'ing around and has huge track record of good decisions including his very high rated campus buildings.
> Surprisingly, he said he doesn’t believe universities should allow donors to choose architects. “If you allow the donor to pick the architect, which has been done in many places, the buildings look like shit. But this is a special case. I’ve been doing it for a long time and I know more about it. And I have a very good architect helping me, Navy F. Banvard [a principal at VTBS Architects], who’s one of California’s biggest apartment house architects.” VTBS is the architect of record for the project. [0]
> Munger said he based the dorm’s design on the Unité d'Habitation in Marseille by Le Corbusier. [0]
> Given that the concrete housing block [Unité d'Habitation] in question has also been known as ‘La Maison du Fada’, or the ‘House of the Crazy’, by local people and even residents with a sense of humour,[1]
> During the long phone interview, Munger said that with a large brood of children and grandchildren, he is “intimately familiar with university housing.” [0]
Local Nonagenarian billionaire, raised through the great depression, serving in World War II, somehow still allowed to make decisions concerning others. Whole world shocked.
> Munger said he based the dorm’s design on the Unité d'Habitation in Marseille by Le Corbusier.
And in typical LeCorb style: it’s a top-down design for little people who have no souls, to live like the people in charge think they ought. Personal space is unimportant; privacy is an afterthought, because your life is not important except as part of a unified collective, which we, the elites, will manage to our own ends.
Glorified common areas — dark and puny individual cells.
No, it's the language of someone who's rational and so rich that he doesn't need to be persuasive (a.k.a. manipulative) to make people like him. He can instead say things exactly as they are, without concern for his approval ratings or the risk of getting cancelled.
No, Munger declared literally in the past that his best quality is to be «rational» and one of his best known recurrent expressions is, "you will agree with me, because you are smart and I am right".
I’m not disagreeing that he says that or that some people apparently find that endearing. It’s just hilarious to see it written out as an earnest sincere response.
Munger himself mention the thing while joking in public. For the rest, I am not sure about what you find hilarious, if the ground sincerity of the statement makes you react. Some are just confident.
Munger said McFadden would “go ape-shit” if he saw the models; McFadden did see all the material, including the models, and resigned. Munger is clearly unable to comprehend disagreement with himself, which is definitely not rational behaviour.
> This is the language of someone who has been surrounded by yes-men for so long
Munger is an asshole, but that's not something that's happened over time - he's always been like that, there's the entire BRKB shareholders meeting records as tangible proof.
Why are soo many people who have a proven track record in the markets going haywire? Zuck with his Metaverse, Elon with his Tesla Bot, Sam Altman „Lets scan every eyeball in the world“ now Charlie Munger with his windowless dorms. Is it just their ever-growing echo chambers of yes-men or has the flooding of the markets with money maybe gone too far to keep everyone honest/down to earth?
No, that is the language of somebody who does not need or want to speak differently than he thinks. And there is no hint that he does not understand the criticism he dismisses with his own good reasons.
Although, yes, that «Everybody who sees the models goes ape-shit for them» sounds a bit odd, off expected statistics.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
Also, it’ a Santa Barbara. You get enough sun in Santa Barbara, and don’t have sunless winters. If this were proposed in e.g. New York, I would object.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Blinds literally work in a large office space. I work in such a space now. We get direct sunlight most of the year. If it’s too bright, people just go up to the window and put up the blinds. If it’s an overcast day, sometimes the blinds are up, sometimes they’re down, just based on any random person’s whim. As I said above, if you work in a place that literally makes the room so bright that you can’t see your screen, the solution is probably not to argue about your ideal setup with strangers on HN, but rather to have a conversation with your coworkers and make it so you can actually see your screen.
Blinds are far less expensive than windows. It doesn’t make sense for a company to put windows everywhere but then not be able to afford some cheap window coverings. Every window-covered office I’ve ever worked in has had roller shades that were very effective at controlling glare. They’re even electronic so they can be automated. It’s not difficult or expensive.
As a counterpoint, I worked at a company where the engineering manager thought all engineers wanted to work I dark caves, so that’s what we got.
Except most adults don’t want to work in dark caves so a lot of us ended up working from the common spaces to be exposed to some natural light. Eventually we ended up working from home because there was no way I could last in a dark cave every single day.
> 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.
Blocking out light is easy. Put up curtains or a sheet.
But you can’t go the other way. There’s no way to add natural light, exterior views, and opportunity for fresh air after the building has been constructed.
With windows, everyone can choose. Without windows, there is no choice.
There's a limited amount of exterior wall space. If you give the bedrooms windows then that pushes the living space to the interior and makes it window less.
That's how my freshman dorm was. Moving exterior to interior it was bedrooms, study space, and then a shared living room. The result was windows in the bedroom, where they were mostly covered with blinds, and no windows in the living area.
That's the wrong compromise. You want the light in the living areas where people are spending their days. Of all the different trade offs windowless bedrooms is 100% the right call.
> There's a limited amount of exterior wall space. If you give the bedrooms windows then that pushes the living space to the interior and makes it window less.
Or maybe you just make the floorplates smaller to increase the ratio of exterior walls to floor area like most residential buildings.
Someone who can afford to invest one point five billion US dollars into a single student's dorm is under little pressure to be efficient, one would think.
I live in a wooded area on a beautiful stream, and my house is full of giant windows. I still spend 10+ hours/day working and relaxing in the dark underground utility room, because that lets me control the light, and I’m only looking at the screen anyway.
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.
>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.
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.
IMHO it's a terrible layout but not for the lack of windows in bedrooms. The pod shared space is basically useless. Why do students on a meal plan need a full kitchen? What are they going to do with a single big table? Why use 1/2 of each pods exterior wall for windowless bedrooms?
The common space should be the entire exterior wall. It should be a living room instead of a kitchen/table combo.
The proportions are off too, IMHO. The pod living spaces are too small and the great rooms too big.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.”
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.
> “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.
I think it's pretty clear. He doesn't give a rat's ass about what people think of him, he has enough money for him not to care. Good for him, I guess. The problem begins when these sociopaths try to impose their views on other people, and esp. if they want to "help".
We should not encourage them with tax deductions or other incentives.
I agree with you, but I think it's actual deeper than him just not caring about what people think of him. I think it's more deeply engrained narcissism in that he doesn't trust others' expertise or opinions, thinks he's the chosen one of being right, and ultimately just likes the control he can wield over others.
Okay but now you're just making things up about him that he never said or implied. You are welcome to have whatever opinion of him you want, but it has nothing to do with his quote about preferring to be wealthy and unpopular over being popular but not wealthy.
The implication that you have two choices, either zero dollars or a billion, isn't hard to understand because it's cryptic. It's hard to understand because it's completely irrational.
You can’t figure out why he’d personally rather be a billionaire and not be liked by everyone vs. not have any money? Which would you prefer?
The people who are so negative about this are completely unrealistic. UCSB is putting students in off-campus hotels right now. There is an incredible housing shortage. Munger is taking a very tangible step to fix it. Some students there live in their cars (plenty of windows, I suppose) Give me a break.
You don't think setting out a dichotomy of either "being a billionaire" or "not having any money" is a just a tad narrow-minded?
Sure, tangible steps are nice. Even hobbyist billionaire architects are capable of taking tangible steps because it's quite a low bar to clear.
I do find it a bit ridiculous that you call any opposition to the plan "unrealistic", as though Munger is the only architect in the world who can save UCSB from its housing problem.
No idea why this got downvoted but this is exactly it. Also what's the point of getting a teeny sliver of money for "free" (read: by waiving your right to an opinion) when the entire project is demonstrably rather expensive to start with?
He and warren buffet both strike me, as a huge fan of buffet, as being incomplete humans somehow. They are like characters in a role playing game where you put all your points into “business intelligence” and severely neglected everything else. Then they grew up in an insulated bubble just thinking about money 24/7 their whole lives. Buffet himself said something along the lines of “if I was born at any other time in history I’d be eaten by an animal for lunch”. Jordan Peterson also made a good point about the very wealthy…why do we ask why there aren’t more billionaires instead of asking why some people are willing to do nothing but work 24/7 their whole lives for success. These are not people we should demean or aspire to be in my opinion. They are not healthy mentally.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
I've never seen any dorms with "premium" student housing, let alone mixed in the building. There are certainly (especially older) dorms with more desirable rooms, but they were never "premium" or unavailable to any student.
Yes, this there are many campuses that have luxury dorm buildings, personally I’ve experienced this at BU and North Eastern in some of the newer residential high rises, they aren’t necessarily “pent houses” but the point is tiered luxury housing at different price points does exist on campuses. I think his general point is that the space is the most desirable location and his design derives the most utility for the most people. It comes at the expense of individual freedom. It’s an interesting statement from someone like Munger. It’s equitable housing, if this hasn’t been done/studied at scale anywhere else I don’t understand the pushback to try something novel to solve a real problem. While the cost may seem high for this project, if it succeeds it could have huge benefits for future generations. If it fails, it will also provide valuable data points that can be used towards solving the problem, seems like a win/win especially with a private donor like Munger footing a large portion of the bill.
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).
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.
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.)
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.
> 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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I know someone who lived out of his car at UC Berkeley because he couldn't afford the rent. He would have loved the option for a room with no windows.
I don't care for Munger. With that said, there's a huge disconnect here with your argument unless you can show a reasonable solution. There are poor people now who need housing. We can just build something subpar and help lift people out of homelessness.
"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."
Both of these situations are in California. Construction costs are extremely high right now.
Look. This isn't how it works. What happened is that no contractor thought it was worthwhile to take on a small project when they were busy with bigger fish. So they quoted him a ridiculous price.
It's not because it would actually cost them 200 000$ in labour and material to build a deck and redo a yard.
Besides, for a billion dollar you're not dealing with local contractors, at that price you can even contract international companies, let alone bring in labour from the rest of the country.
Units built for the homeless in Los Angeles are costing $500,000 and up.
"When Los Angeles voters approved Prop. HHH in 2016, city officials predicted units would cost $350,000 to $414,000. In reality, prices have jumped to as much as $701,000 per unit, with 60 percent of the living spaces expected to exceed half a million dollars each."
You'll notice even the low end that was promoted to voters is higher than $330,000.
what kind of slope? what does "redo his yard" mean? How much earth has to be moved? The deck is likely a small addendum to the cost of the earthwork, so its silly to talk about the deck as if its the same project.
Humans have been building buildings for a pretty long time. So I would propose that my reasonable solution is every other building that’s ever been built.
The problem is that labor and material cost continues to go up. As an architect yourself, I suspect you're not working for minimum wage. Given the thoughtful comment you posted originally, you seem like someone who puts in good work. People who put in good work deserve raises.
I dont know how to solve for rising costs. I do know that if I cannot afford something nice, I have to settle for something subpar. I'm not sure how else to deal with the issue.
There is an infinity of solutions for any building program. Eliminating windows solves a couple of problems, but creates many others. Throughout human history, windowless cells have been reserved for very few situations, such as extreme punishment, or a cheap cabin on a Disney cruise (arguably overlapping cases).
I really don’t understand how everyone’s freaking out about the window and alluding to prison and punishment but cramming two or three strangers into one tiny, old room is perfectly fine as the status quo.
Architects needs to be paid, something something, therefore we build bedrooms without windows. Sounds a bit like the underpants gnome reasoning to me.
I would understand if someone crunched the numbers and after a long and detailed reasoning they would have come up with this solution as the only one which can potentially work. But as far as I understand that is not what happened here. The donor has aspirations to be an architecture too and stipulated that this is the only way his money can be spent. No deviations from the plan are acceptable.
The expected prices - 330k per room - is not an effective way to provide for poor people who need housing. If that is what you want to do, then you need to build cheap housing, not a monstrosity that manages to be both barely livable and also very expensive.
>If that is what you want to do, then you need to build cheap housing
The powerful land-speculation lobby (Monoplex owners) block every attempt at this. Munger Hall is the result. If you don't like that this is being built, your quarrel is with the suburban climate arsonists who hold up every development for extensive review until it dies.
Housing and living costs have gone insane. Personally I don't care about a window, I care about having a space I can study, work, and not deal with a bad roommate. I care about it being affordable, with access to a kitchen.
The way munger is going about it is a ridiculous amount of money, and I heavily doubt it will be built right. But the concept itself, to me, is a worthy tradeoff if it means reduced costs and better benefits. A window is not a benefit I care about.
I lived in a room where the window had to be boarded up and insulated all through the winter. I would much rather be able to live in that room than nowhere at all.
Everywhere I've looked, it appears that California building codes require that bedrooms have windows, but that never seems to come up in these discussions. Are you familiar with the area? Would this building even be legal, or is there a loophole for student housing or something?
The article mentions that UCSB essentially runs its own separate building department. Guess what, that department answers to the same idiot who decides whether to accept billion $ gifts from other idiots. Et voilà!
In general, commercial and institutional buildings do not have to meet the same building codes as private residences. Try to find an outlet in a hospital room the next time you visit a sick friend. None of this one outlet on every wall and every 8 ft.
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.
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.
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.
Tietgenkollegiet is a small experimental project housing less than 400 students with apartments starting at $500 a month (not including electricity or heating). Hardly a fair comparing it to a project that needs to house thousands of students who cannot afford anything else.
Also no one would consider Tietgenkollegiet in any way typical Danish student housing.
> Also no one would consider Tietgenkollegiet in any way typical Danish student housing.
I consider it is fair to mention Tietgenkollegiet since this is a discussion around dormitory/college hall architecture and quality.
Most of the dorms in Europe and the rest of the world are more similar to normal apartment buildings however unlike Charlie Munger proposal they are lower density (more space per resident in both common and personal areas) and have windows to the outside world.
I would expect _any_ proposal to improve on designs to be more livable not less; the increasing in density of dormitories, decreasing common spaces, and removal of windows is indicative of American Decline[1].
Even soviet khrushchyovka[2] from the 60s/70s _are better_ than the proposed dorms and it is something normally derided by American discourse.
> starting at $500 a month (not including electricity or heating)
Corruption. A billionaire’s design bypassed the normal approval committees because he waved money around. What else would it be? We excel at being corrupt (Congress? Healthcare? MIC?) AND deluding ourselves into thinking we’re the best. It’s a farce, and to my eye it seems to be slowly collapsing in on itself.
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.
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.
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.
I understand that you're saying these contractors have better jobs to do than someone's yard. The guys who came out to give bids specialized in residential landscaping work. The fact that they came out to give quotes means that some of these 200k jobs are actually happening.
In my experience, contractors who do not want your job will not come out to give bids.
No one is paying 200k for a deck and some yard work. Either your friend had some insane demands that would fetch a high price, or they were just giving a high price.
It has been my experience that charging 5x the usual amount for a job you don't want to do is something many contractoes do.
College construction and the related contractors and unions in the US are really effective at extracting money from even "small" projects. The goal is certainly not to be efficient.
As somebody who went to UCSB, has lived in LA, TX, NYC, NOVA, etc. you cannot compare the price of the average house in flyover country to housing next to UCSB
I would expect a huge portion of that Room & Board is actually the "Board" component, i.e. food, utilities, maintenance, etc. The portion that just goes to the capital costs of the building itself (and the $1.5 billion is just the total estimated capital cost of the project), is much smaller.
UCSB is very close to the Pacific Ocean and much of the ground is sandy cliffs that frequently fall into the Pacific Ocean. The university is trying to build for the long term and is very concerned about the possible impacts of climate change that might accelerate erosion. Those factors contribute to increase building costs.
The building location is one of the most northern spots on campus, i.e. it is basically further from the ocean than nearly every other spot in the university. While Santa Barbara construction prices certainly influence the cost, protecting against "sandy cliffs" do not.
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.
It is around $1k square foot, which seems about double what houses would cost, but universities have a lot of requirements. I.e. stricter fire safety adds costs all around.
The room is $70k, the shared space in the module per room is about $70k. The other $90k is convertible classrooms, a Costco, etc which would normally be entirely separate building projects.
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.
> 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.
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.
316 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 256 ms ] threadThe 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.
Also offices. Not something you see often in Europe (not impossible, maybe, but very rare).
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...
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.
Join us on Reddit to start learning about Berkshire Hathaway:
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Today is Q3 2021 earnings!
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.
He has done so by maintaining an absolutely-no-fucks-given-get-straight-to-the-goddamn-point attitude.
https://www.veryapt.com/ApartmentReview-a7222-munger-graduat...
and, for myself an essential differentiator, the University of Michigan's are for older grad students.
The top review is titled “No windows, no way”. The second review says it was great until COVID hit and they had to actually spend time in the windowless rooms.
Most of the positives seem to be about things like location and convenient access to other things, which has nothing to do with the architecture. The architecture is listed as the downside.
It would also be more expensive and have fewer rooms. In all likelihood, that would result in multiple people per room. All that makes the result unclear.
The proposed building looks like a Borg Cube (maybe that's why architects don't like it?), but that's only possible because most bedrooms are not on exterior walls. Instead, each bedroom is part of a suite that opens to a common area that does have a real window!
If you take a look at the footprint of residential buildings, you'll notice that they are almost never square. In fact, they have a fairly high aspect ratio.
In the case of Santa Barbara, the major constraint is land. If you wanted to house the same number of students, you'd either need to make the building 2-3x taller or use 2-3x as much land. Otherwise the buildings would be so close that the real windows would get no natural light (but, hey, at least you'd have a real window).
The issue is not the aspect ratio. The issue is that Charlie is obsessed with having every room connected to a common space which is the one with natural light. It would be trivial to have a slightly higher aspect ratio, maybe one or two more floors, and have the common areas in the center.
Apparently the original article included only 1/8th of the building's floor plan. Another commenter linked me this floor plan: https://www.dezeen.com/2021/11/02/architect-resigns-grotesqu...
As you can see, the surface area problem even worse!
Each bedroom is 8x10 feet, but the building is only 87 * 4 by 200 * 2 feet. That's 1496 linear feet of exterior wall. That's only enough for 187 exterior rooms per floor, while the design calls for approximately 512 (8 rooms per suite * 8 suites per house * 8 housed per floor).
> It would be trivial to have a slightly higher aspect ratio, maybe one or two more floors
You'd need to add not just "one or two" more floors, but increase the residential part of the building from 9 floors to 24!. Even if you made very narrow (6 foot) rooms, it would still require 18 floors.
> You can make a not so tall building with a budget of 330 000$ per room
And they're paying over $1 million per bathroom! I consider this a fairly disingenuous comment because the article is clear that the building includes space for other things like convertible classrooms and rec areas.
Seems to me that HN users in this thread and UCS students aren't able to look past those tradeoffs.
As a student, I'm perfectly happy to have my own room with no windows. This is because (at least pre-covid when the facility was built), there's tons of stuff to do on campus and I won't be in my dorm room all that much anyway. The location is amazing. Even as an antisocial person, you get your own private space, which is something that many dorms don't provide on a budget. Yeah the lack of windows sucks, but I can live with it if it means I get my own private space and easy fast access to all the other things I need.
It seems like HN users (and architects) aren't even considering that those tradeoffs exist. It's like they want to design a building without any regard to land use, cost or how many students it serves.
I see no acknowledgement that:
1. UCSB is located on a narrow coastal plain, where land is at a premium.
2. Giving every bedroom a window implies blowing up the surface area/volume ratio of the building (so build it taller or build 2x or 3x as many buildings).
3. A bunch of long, skinny buildings requires more land (and probably more $) to house the same number of students as one borg cube.
Additionally, much of the criticism fails to acknowledge the actual design of the building.
Yes, each bedroom does not have a real window, but bedrooms are grouped into suites of 8, with a study area, kitchen and bathrooms... and that common space does have real windows!. An additional common area on each floor, shared among 8 suites, spanning the width of the building, has a wall covered with real windows!.
I agree that the borg cube is ugly, but I'd like to see the proposed alternative. The alternative needs to house the same number of students on the same amount of land and cost roughly the same amount. I don't think you can do the first two without building something 35 stories tall (more than twice the height of Storke Tower). And then you'll get the predictable comments about the "Manhattanization" of SB.
https://images.app.goo.gl/9s77YAvZXuEwEYaM6
This is the floorplan I could find. Where are the windows on the suites of house 4?
> The alternative needs to house the same number of students on the same amount of land and cost roughly the same amount.
Why? Did god gave us the number of students this university must accept? Sometimes the correct answer is that the question is wrong.
I stand corrected! I was going by the floorplan on the original article, which apparently didn't show the full building. You'd think that someone trying to make the point that it's a bad design would show the parts of the design that are actually bad.
> Why? Did god gave us the number of students this university must accept? Sometimes the correct answer is that the question is wrong.
Sure, that's a fair point, but then the problem isn't the building or its patron, so the criticism is misplaced.
https://detroit.cbslocal.com/2021/11/03/heres-what-its-like-...
I'm going to trust actual people quoted over an anonymous out-of-five rating site as being accurate and representative.
I'm not sure how I would respond if I were considering living in a windowless room for a bit less than a year. I think I might not like the idea, but I probably wouldn't make the lack of a window the only consideration.
[1]https://www.mlive.com/resizer/er_cS_IEhTFMCZrSWuLnRZtwMEc=/8...
As an adult, I adore windows. As a teenager and young adult, I wanted to sleep in after drinking too much or pulling an all nighter. (I passed this to a friend, an architect in Arizona. They think Munger’s spot on.)
It’s not a windowless building. It’s a building with windowless units. If someone really wants a window, they can get one. (Also, it’s UCSB. Most students move off campus after freshman year.)
Manzanita and Barrett. The latter, new. (And everyone had hacked the air conditioner controls to override the limiter on week one.) Still had foil. It’s hot and bright and even with dark skin I was frequently sunburned.
Most windows end up with coverings because it gives easy optionality.
Close the shades when you want it dark. Open them when you don’t.
Removing windows gives zero optionality.
“It’s okay actually because he always talks like this” is one of the weirdest arguments in this thread.
Why can’t we call out bad behavior just because it comes from a specific person?Bad behavior is bad behavior. Being consistent about being bad doesn’t make it good. I don’t understand why anything thinks this is okay just because it comes from a specific personality.
> If you think he has "been surrounded by yes-men for so long", I have some news for you. He doesn't manage anyone.
He’s dangling $1.2 billion dollars in front of people to get them to do his bidding with this construction. I really don’t understand how you think that’s less of an incentive than giving someone a paycheck a fraction of that magnitude.
His way of saying "You'd better be nice to me"?
https://www.pacbiztimes.com/2021/11/02/ucsb-says-its-stickin...
This and more recent articles mention the 200M out of 1.2B.
If he did invest in yes men, he would be broke, because they say yes all the time.
We need more of that.
> Munger said he based the dorm’s design on the Unité d'Habitation in Marseille by Le Corbusier. [0]
> Given that the concrete housing block [Unité d'Habitation] in question has also been known as ‘La Maison du Fada’, or the ‘House of the Crazy’, by local people and even residents with a sense of humour,[1]
> During the long phone interview, Munger said that with a large brood of children and grandchildren, he is “intimately familiar with university housing.” [0]
Local Nonagenarian billionaire, raised through the great depression, serving in World War II, somehow still allowed to make decisions concerning others. Whole world shocked.
[0] https://www.architecturalrecord.com/articles/15378-exclusive...
[1] https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20130423-design-icon-or-...
And in typical LeCorb style: it’s a top-down design for little people who have no souls, to live like the people in charge think they ought. Personal space is unimportant; privacy is an afterthought, because your life is not important except as part of a unified collective, which we, the elites, will manage to our own ends.
Glorified common areas — dark and puny individual cells.
Not necessarily. You are confusing social graces with rationality; rationality is optimized pursuit of one's own utility, not politeness.
Munger is an asshole, but that's not something that's happened over time - he's always been like that, there's the entire BRKB shareholders meeting records as tangible proof.
yes
Although, yes, that «Everybody who sees the models goes ape-shit for them» sounds a bit odd, off expected statistics.
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.
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.
https://detroit.cbslocal.com/2021/11/03/heres-what-its-like-...
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
As a counterpoint, I worked at a company where the engineering manager thought all engineers wanted to work I dark caves, so that’s what we got.
Except most adults don’t want to work in dark caves so a lot of us ended up working from the common spaces to be exposed to some natural light. Eventually we ended up working from home because there was no way I could last in a dark cave every single day.
> 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.
Blocking out light is easy. Put up curtains or a sheet.
But you can’t go the other way. There’s no way to add natural light, exterior views, and opportunity for fresh air after the building has been constructed.
With windows, everyone can choose. Without windows, there is no choice.
That's how my freshman dorm was. Moving exterior to interior it was bedrooms, study space, and then a shared living room. The result was windows in the bedroom, where they were mostly covered with blinds, and no windows in the living area.
That's the wrong compromise. You want the light in the living areas where people are spending their days. Of all the different trade offs windowless bedrooms is 100% the right call.
Or maybe you just make the floorplates smaller to increase the ratio of exterior walls to floor area like most residential buildings.
So add courtyards. Or build an E shaped building. Or build multiple smaller buildings.
You know, the things we do for other large institutional buildings like hospitals and dorms.
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.
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.
https://www.architecturalrecord.com/ext/resources/news/2021/...
They also aren't living in a windowless box. They still likely get natural light in their cubicles.
The common space should be the entire exterior wall. It should be a living room instead of a kitchen/table combo.
The proportions are off too, IMHO. The pod living spaces are too small and the great rooms too big.
Also, the outrage here happened to go viral, which makes the discussion turn stupid.
https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/greater-la/van-life-street-m...
It's a loss even on those terms.
Incredible move to make huge claims like this and then, presumably (he’s 97), die before you have the chance to be proven wrong.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> I honestly struggle to understand what he means by this, but I have a hunch it's not good.
I think it's pretty clear. He doesn't give a rat's ass about what people think of him, he has enough money for him not to care. Good for him, I guess. The problem begins when these sociopaths try to impose their views on other people, and esp. if they want to "help".
We should not encourage them with tax deductions or other incentives.
Taxes good, charity bad.
There a difference in attitude between the common peasant who has been poor for generations and a rich guy. There really is.
The people who are so negative about this are completely unrealistic. UCSB is putting students in off-campus hotels right now. There is an incredible housing shortage. Munger is taking a very tangible step to fix it. Some students there live in their cars (plenty of windows, I suppose) Give me a break.
Sure, tangible steps are nice. Even hobbyist billionaire architects are capable of taking tangible steps because it's quite a low bar to clear.
I do find it a bit ridiculous that you call any opposition to the plan "unrealistic", as though Munger is the only architect in the world who can save UCSB from its housing problem.
Also, they truly exhausted all other options?
He could just donate the money without trying to micromanage the project. That would help fix the housing shortage just as well.
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.
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.
Are there other student dorms where the top floor is given to rich people for penthouse condos?
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.
I've never seen any dorms with "premium" student housing, let alone mixed in the building. There are certainly (especially older) dorms with more desirable rooms, but they were never "premium" or unavailable to any student.
If he's trying to come off as not out of touch... it's not working.
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).
[1] https://www.architecturalrecord.com/ext/resources/news/2021/...
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.)
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
I don't care for Munger. With that said, there's a huge disconnect here with your argument unless you can show a reasonable solution. There are poor people now who need housing. We can just build something subpar and help lift people out of homelessness.
For that price you can build a three bedroom condo with amenities.
This is a false dilemma. Little money is being saved here.
"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."
Both of these situations are in California. Construction costs are extremely high right now.
It's not because it would actually cost them 200 000$ in labour and material to build a deck and redo a yard.
Besides, for a billion dollar you're not dealing with local contractors, at that price you can even contract international companies, let alone bring in labour from the rest of the country.
Including the cost of land, for a full condo. It would correspond to a construction price of a condo of ~300 000$.
A dormitory room is going to cost less than a condo.
"When Los Angeles voters approved Prop. HHH in 2016, city officials predicted units would cost $350,000 to $414,000. In reality, prices have jumped to as much as $701,000 per unit, with 60 percent of the living spaces expected to exceed half a million dollars each."
You'll notice even the low end that was promoted to voters is higher than $330,000.
https://www.dailynews.com/2020/02/21/prop-hhh-projects-in-la...
This construction has to deal with NIMBYs and related delays, again UCSB doesn't have to bother with that.
And most of all these aren't single occupancy units. They are units for 2-3 people.
So yes, construction costs would be around the 350k mark when you take into account the land, for multi bedroom units, versus a single bedroom.
I dont know how to solve for rising costs. I do know that if I cannot afford something nice, I have to settle for something subpar. I'm not sure how else to deal with the issue.
I would understand if someone crunched the numbers and after a long and detailed reasoning they would have come up with this solution as the only one which can potentially work. But as far as I understand that is not what happened here. The donor has aspirations to be an architecture too and stipulated that this is the only way his money can be spent. No deviations from the plan are acceptable.
The powerful land-speculation lobby (Monoplex owners) block every attempt at this. Munger Hall is the result. If you don't like that this is being built, your quarrel is with the suburban climate arsonists who hold up every development for extensive review until it dies.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29132614
The way munger is going about it is a ridiculous amount of money, and I heavily doubt it will be built right. But the concept itself, to me, is a worthy tradeoff if it means reduced costs and better benefits. A window is not a benefit I care about.
Have you experienced being in a windowless room for a long period of time?
It’s not a luxury.
They will be living in a vibrant college community, with common areas, beaches, parks, libraries etc...
I've lived in a room with a Window against a brick wall in NYC.
I’ve been in a windowless prison cell, it sucks.
That doesn't sound pleasant but college students aren't prisoners locked in their dorm rooms.
I recall being stuck in a room for days working in winter
And FWIW I went to school in a similar climate to yours and was never "stuck in a room for days". How did you get to class? How did you get food?
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.
Generally countries have universities of similar sizes but fewer of them.
Also no one would consider Tietgenkollegiet in any way typical Danish student housing.
I consider it is fair to mention Tietgenkollegiet since this is a discussion around dormitory/college hall architecture and quality.
Most of the dorms in Europe and the rest of the world are more similar to normal apartment buildings however unlike Charlie Munger proposal they are lower density (more space per resident in both common and personal areas) and have windows to the outside world.
I would expect _any_ proposal to improve on designs to be more livable not less; the increasing in density of dormitories, decreasing common spaces, and removal of windows is indicative of American Decline[1].
Even soviet khrushchyovka[2] from the 60s/70s _are better_ than the proposed dorms and it is something normally derided by American discourse.
> starting at $500 a month (not including electricity or heating)
That seems very close to UF/UA rent:
- https://www.housing.ufl.edu/living-options/rental-rates-2/
- https://housing.arizona.edu/home/rates-applications-policies...
Couldn't find the UCSB monthly rent but seems it would be way higher than the previous two. ( https://www.housing.ucsb.edu/current-residents/move-in/resid... )
[1]: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/American_decline
[2]: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Khrushchyovka
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cac
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.
You know, a problem that doesn't apply to billion dollar construction.
In my experience, contractors who do not want your job will not come out to give bids.
It has been my experience that charging 5x the usual amount for a job you don't want to do is something many contractoes do.
It is expensive but Room & Board is 16.5k for 9 months at UCSB, so it will break even in 30 years or so depending how you model it.
https://www.finaid.ucsb.edu/cost-of-attendance
"Huge Portion"... not really its about 2k each semester for food.
https://www.dining.ucsb.edu/off-campus-meal-plans
Building location: https://goo.gl/maps/f2SxAxgajfFotQ8K8
The rooms are 10x7 so these beds would need to be twin longs like (all?) US dorms.
As someone who lives in California, not really, no.
The room is $70k, the shared space in the module per room is about $70k. The other $90k is convertible classrooms, a Costco, etc which would normally be entirely separate building projects.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29132614
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.