97-Year-Old Billionaire Doubles Down on Window-Less Mega-Dorm Vanity Project

97-Year-Old Billionaire Doubles Down on Window-Less Mega-Dorm Vanity Project

Quote:

Billionaire-turned-amateur-architect Charlie Munger seems to have no qualms about building a mostly windowless mega-dorm for thousands of students at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “This is not some crazy idea,” the 97-year-old Berkshire Hathaway investor insisted to The Washington Post after a firestorm erupted this week over his eyebrow-raising design.

Yes it is.

Quote:

Plans for the 11-story, 1.68 million-square-foot project attracted fierce criticism after the Santa Barbara Independent and student-run Daily Nexus newspaper reported that a consulting architect had quit in protest. The dorm, named Munger Hall, would house 4,500 students in a building with just two entrances, and 94 percent of the rooms would have no windows. Instead, students would be jammed into single-person rooms on pre-fabricated floors with “virtual windows that simulate daylight.”

There's a picture of the design at the link. It looks like a freaking firetrap.

Quote:

Top Los Angeles architect Dennis McFadden, a member of the school’s design review committee for 15 years, quit over what he described as an “outlandish” proposal that ignored basic standards and was approved without proper input. “An ample body of documented evidence shows that interior environments with access to natural light, air, and views to nature improve both the physical and mental wellbeing of occupants,” he wrote in a letter, obtained by the Santa Barbara Independent. “The Munger Hall design ignores this evidence and seems to take the position that it doesn’t matter.” He called the plan “unsupportable from my perspective as an architect, a parent, and a human being.” Carla Yanni, an architectural history professor at Rutgers University, told the Post that “the arrogance of the proposal is breathtaking.”

Quote:

“Everybody loves light and everybody prefers natural light. But it’s a game of tradeoffs,” Munger said. “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.”

And that's a bad thing, how?

tl/dr version: Crazy old man designs insane firetrap, and university values big donation over their students.

via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/318oEYq