The jokes flowed freely Wednesday after the website VR Scout reported that Apple could be considering a car design featuring an in-car virtual reality entertainment system and no windows.
Apple reportedly filed a patent on May 3 for the entertainment system, which could replace the view of the real world in a car with virtual environments. It noted that “autonomous vehicles may have limited or even no windows, and thus the motions that passengers experience in such vehicles may not match what they are visually seeing, potentially causing motion sickness” and offered solutions that would combat that.
The article featured a concept design of the Apple car produced by Concept Creator and Letsgodigital. It’s not Apple’s design.
Apple has been working on creating an autonomous vehicle for several years and has filed a number of relevant patents, but the company has remained secretive about its plans and hasn’t made any official announcements.
While windowless design may not be realistic, Twitter users couldn’t help but pile on to the concept.
A billionaire donor’s design for a mega dorm that would pack UC Santa Barbara students into largely windowless rooms has drawn widespread criticism and prompted the resignation of a consulting architect.
The proposed building, dubbed Munger Hall after donor Charlie Munger, would house 4,500 students in a 1.68 million-square foot complex with only two entrances. The project is expected to cost $1.5 billion.
Living spaces in the building would be split into apartments of eight single occupancy bedrooms, 94 percent of which would not have windows.
The plan ultimately led architect Dennis McFadden to resign from UC Santa Barbara’s design review committee, where he has served for nearly 15 years.
In an Oct. 24 resignation letter to the committee that leaked on the image sharing site Imgur, McFadden described the project as a “social and psychological experiment with an unknown impact on the lives and personal development” of students.
“The basic concept of Munger Hall as a place for students to live is unsupportable from my perspective as an architect, a parent and a human being,” McFadden wrote.
McFadden also raised concerns in the letter over the lack of committee input in the project, and Munger’s influence over the building design.
An interior rendering of the proposed Munger Hall residence communal spaces.Courtesy UC Santa Barbara
Munger, 97, donated $200 million to the project in 2016, stipulating that he would bankroll the residence only if it was built to his design.
He told the UC Board of Regents in 2016 that in lieu of windows, dorm rooms would have artificial “window” monitors like the portholes on Disney cruise ships, where “starfish come in and wink at your children.”
The building would also include recreation areas, a full-service restaurant, and according to a California Environmental Quality Act report, a space to store 570 surfboards.
Munger dismissed criticism about the amount of influence billionaires have on projects like the mega dorm, telling MarketWatch that he’d “rather be a billionaire and not be loved by everybody than not have any money.”
Despite the backlash, UC Santa Barbara intends to move forward with the planned building.
University spokesperson Andrea Estrada described Munger Hall in a statement as “transformational co-living student housing.”
“It is meant to build community, encourage peer-to-peer interaction, promote engagement and relationship building, foster an environment of learning and support, and provide necessary resources and amenities to support a 24/7 on-campus living experience,” Estrada said.
McFadden, however, is doubtful of the building’s effectiveness. In an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, he wrote that the building “attempts to engineer social experiences” by placing communal spaces at the perimeter of the building, which would receive natural light.
He described each apartment as a “sealed” environment, and likened it to “living in a janitor’s closet buried at the center of an Ikea warehouse, with the closest window somewhere back at the entrance.”
Estrada dismissed concerns that the lack of ventilation will jeopardize Covid safety in the building, clarifying that “there is no recirculation of air between student rooms” since each bedroom will be “provided with continuous fresh air supply.” Exhaust air will be vented directly outside.
“One could argue that this may be an improvement in air quality as it does not require a student to open the window for fresh air,” she said.
Social media users were horrified by the plans. Some compared the possible living conditions to guard residences in the dystopian Netflix thriller “Squid Game,” which are similarly windowless.
Others likened the claustrophobic plan for the dorm rooms to prison cells.
Estrada addressed critical assessments of the project as “mischaracterizations,” noting that the building’s evacuation plans comply with fire and building code requirements. The mix of single occupancy bedrooms and communal spaces are designed to provide students with a balance of privacy and social opportunity, she said.
“He has been developing these ideas for many years and on other student housing projects,” Estrada said.
Munger, who does not have an architecture license, previously designed and funded the Munger Graduate Residence Hall at the University of Michigan, which houses more than 600 students. Like the proposed Munger Hall, each apartment of six to seven single bedrooms lacks windows.
CNN reported that students rely on artificial sunlight lamps. Graduate student Luiza Macedo told CNN that she didn’t see the sun for a full week when she had a Covid scare.
One University of Michigan alumni posted in the UC Santa Barbara subreddit recounting their experience in the windowless dorm, warning future students of how much they struggled to wake up without natural light.
Estrada said that the “benefits” of Munger’s approach to student housing are “legion.”
“Mr. Munger enjoys sketching out his ideas and our ongoing responsibility is to interpret and articulate them in drawings,” Estrada continued in the statement. “This design emanates from Mr. Munger’s research and iterative processes to devise a transformational approach to student housing.”
The answer is at the University of Michigan, where the Munger Graduate Residence Hall houses more than 600 graduate students in 6 to 7 bedroom apartments. And most of those single-occupancy rooms don’t have windows, either.
Public policy graduate student Luiza Macedo didn’t see the sun for a full week when she had to isolate in her room at Munger Residence due to a Covid-19 scare.
“That was probably the low point of my experience here. It was being stuck in my room,” Macedo said. “A lot of people are incredulous that this was even a thing before all these articles came out about UCSB…like, how is this legal? How are they doing this to us?”
Many students use sun lamps or night lights to create an artificial sense of daytime — students told CNN Business said it’s almost impossible to get by without one.
Munger, 97, is Warren Buffett’s right-hand man and an amateur architect. He has no formal education in the field.
He’s a graduate of the University of Michigan and donated the majority of his $110 million gift to fund his vision of the $185 million dorm. In 2013, it was the largest single donation the school had ever received. Michigan promoted the building as a “community of scholars,” where graduate students of different disciplines constantly interact with each other in common areas, where there are windows.
His controversial plans for Munger Hall at UCSB — an 11-story building that would provide almost 4,500 windowless beds for undergraduates — led a consulting architect to quit in October. Munger donated $200 million to UCSB to fund the dorms, with the stipulation that his designs are followed.
“When an ignorant man leaves, I regard it as a plus not a minus,” Munger said about the consulting architect in an interview with CNN Business Friday. “He’s just plain wrong.”
Munger says his designs create positive experiences for students.
“I was (at the University of Michigan) last month, you never saw a happier bunch of students and it has a very similar design,” Munger said. “So all I can say is that I have been doing this for a long time and no building has failed yet.”
Unlike Michigan, the rooms at UCSB would have artificial windows meant to imitate fake portholes on Disney Cruises.
“It was a mistake on my part, not to put these artificial windows into Michigan,” Munger said in an interview with CNN Business Monday.
Macedo doesn’t spend much time in her room, which costs around $1,000 a month. Instead, she studies facing windows on the top floor — but that’s not because she wants to collaborate with anyone.
“Mental health far outweighs the desire for people to collaborate or whatever that goal is,” Macedo said. “I would much rather not have depression than collaborate with my peers.”
Some students have gotten used to living without a window in their room.
“I wasn’t sure how living in a bedroom with no window was was going to work out but for me, at least, it’s really no big deal,” graduate student Sabrina Ivanenco said. “I think that once you exit your bedroom, you have a very beautiful living space.”
In fact the building has a rating of 8.8 out of 10 on veryapt.com. Reviewers praise the building’s amenities, including study rooms and a fitness center. And each room has a queen-sized bed and its own bathroom, with common space that features a large kitchen, living room, dining area and natural light. But plenty of commenters also bemoan about the lack of windows.
Lindsay Stefanski, the assistant director of graduate academic initiatives, said Munger has multiple community-building events in place, such as yoga on the roof, to encourage well being. The hall had partnered with the university’s counseling and psychological department to provide SAD lamps, which stimulate sunlight.
“The feedback has just been phenomenal,” Stefanski said. “Students appreciate those opportunities to get out of their silos and connect with each other in those larger common spaces.”
UCSB said in a statement Friday that the project and design of the building will go forward as planned.
Munger has also designed a dorm at Stanford University and a library with removable walls at Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles. But he has no plans to bring his dorm designs to other universities.
“No, I won’t do it. I’m ready to die very shortly,” He said. “But I do expect this dorm will be copied four more times on the USCB campus and many more times than that on the other campuses on the UC system and I expect this to spread all over the country. It’s a better mouse trap.”
Louise Batta, a PhD student, disagrees. She wasn’t aware her room wouldn’t have windows — she said there were no pictures on the website, and due to Covid she couldn’t tour in person. Batta said she immediately began getting headaches because of ventilation issues.
“It’s completely thrown off my circadian rhythm. It’s hard to get up in the morning to go out of bed because I never know what time it is,” Batta said. “I know that people joke all the time about how bad the living situation is, but it has truly had a negative impact on my grad school experience.”
Batta is attempting to break her lease.
“I haven’t heard any birds since I came up here because I don’t have a window. I can’t wake up to birds,” Batta said.
A consulting architect on the university’s Design Review Committee quit in protest of the project, in a resignation letter obtained by CNN Business and reported by the Santa Barbara Independent.
“The basic concept of Munger Hall as a place for students to live is unsupportable from my perspective as an architect, a parent and a human being,” California architect Dennis McFadden wrote in the letter. McFadden declined further comment to CNN Business.
UCSB’s campus is located on cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean and has its own beach. Its beachfront location is an integral part of campus culture and identity — and Munger Hall doesn’t reflect this, McFadden claimed.
“Even the rooftop courtyard… looks inward and may as well be on the ground in the desert as on the eleventh floor on the coast of California,” McFadden wrote.
In addition to being Warren Buffett’s right-hand man, Munger is an amateur architect. He has no formal education in the field.
“Architecture is a field where tastes vary, and everyone thinks he’s an expert. And no two architects ever agree on anything,” Munger told CNN Business.
Munger, the 97-year-old vice chairman of Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway, donated $200 million to UCSB to fund the dorms, with the caveat that his designs are followed. He wanted the dorm rooms to be tiny and windowless to encourage residents to spend more time outside in the common areas, meeting other students.
“While the bedroom may be ‘just good enough,’ the entirety of the experience makes it exceptional — ‘our town in the sky,'” the October UCSB design review committee report said.
That didn’t sit right with McFadden.
“As the ‘vision’ of the single donor, the building is a social and psychological experiment with an unknown impact on the lives and personal development of the undergraduates the University serves,” McFadden wrote.
The plan for Munger Hall includes an 11-story building that would provide more than 4,500 beds for undergraduates. Each residential floor would have eight Houses, each holding 63 students. There are eight suites in each House, and every suite has eight single-occupancy beds — window not included. Each suite also has two bathrooms and a common space.
However, the rooms do have artificial windows, which Munger said resemble the Disney cruise ship’s artificial portholes where “starfish come in and wink at your children,” the Santa Barbara Independent reported.
UCSB said in a statement that the project and design of the building will go forward as planned. The university also said all of the current housing projects are guided by a campus plan, which was “developed through an extensive campus participatory process with the assistance of Urban Design Associates.”
“When this thing goes up and becomes an extreme success, which is absolutely inevitable, I think there will end up to be more buildings like it on the UCSB campus,” Munger said.
McFadden compared the population density of Munger Hall, which is 221,000 students per square mile, as being slightly lower than a portion of Dhaka, Bangladesh. There are only two points of entry and exit.
“The project is essentially the student life portion of a mid-sized university campus in a box,” McFadden wrote. “Munger Hall is an experiment in size and density with no precedent in student housing at that scale.”
The plan was designed by architect Navy Banvard, a principal at Van Tilburg, Banvard, & Soderbergh. Banvard said Munger Hall is a collaborative process between UCSB, Munger and the design team.
UCSB, like other universities, is facing a housing crisis. The Daily Nexus reported in August that UCSB ran out of spaces in university housing and had a waitlist of over 1,000 students who were searching for a place to live.
“One of the reasons, and there are many, for the project is to address the University’s substantive housing needs,” Banvard said. “Good and affordable housing for students in a very competitive housing market.”
Munger’s grandson is an alumnus of UCSB.
“I’m a product of education, public education,” Munger said. “And I know how important schools are and the architecture of schools is, so naturally I drifted toward giving dormitories.”
The project would be slated to open in fall 2025 pending approval and certification in 2022 by the California Coastal Commission.
This is not Munger’s first venture into dorm architecture. Munger Graduate Residences at the University of Michigan follows a similar concept. The high-density dorm, which also has mostly windowless bedrooms, was funded by a $110 million gift by Munger.
