UC Santa Barbara’s proposed giant Munger Hall student housing project spurred national outcry last week in the wake of a consulting architect on the university’s Design Review Committee quitting in protest of the massive dorm building, and left many local architects, community members and students stunned by the building’s “jail-like” design.
“It was truly shocking to see the image of this enormous structure when everything that we are trained to do as architects is to design buildings that are for the health, safety and well-being of the occupants,” Cassandra Ensberg, a Santa Barbara architect for Ensberg Jacobs Design, Inc., told Noozhawk during an interview over the weekend.
“I think there will be unintended consequences of this; it’s certainly not in the tradition of our Santa Barbara environment.”
The 11-story, 159-foot-tall Munger Hall dormitory was designed by 97-year-old billionaire Charles Munger, who donated $200 million toward the approximately $1.4 billion project under the condition that his designs would be followed exactly.
The project is intended to house 4,500 students in more than 1.5 million square feet, and is projected to be ready by the fall term in 2025, right on the cusp of the deadline for the 2010 Long Range Development Plan in which the university pledged to build more housing in order to keep up with the demands of its growing student population.
Munger collaborated with Santa Monica-based Van Tilburg, Banvard & Soderbergh Architects to develop the project.
The structure would increase existing student housing at UCSB by 50%, with nine residential floors of single-occupancy rooms, and include amenities such as a fitness center, demonstration kitchen, cafe, market, and a gastropub, among others.
The building has drawn harsh criticism from architects, students, and community members as the blueprint calls for 94% of the dorm rooms being windowless, there is a lack of proposed vehicle parking, and the size and density of the building do not align with the surrounding neighborhoods.
“UCSB uses words like ‘revolutionary’ and ‘inspired’ to describe the project, but sadly the idea of cramming a bunch of people into substandard housing is not a new one, it’s an old one,” said Alayna Fraser, an architect with Blackbird Architects, Inc. in Santa Barbara.
“We’ve seen it again and again in the 20th century; it’s something that’s been tried and has failed miserably. There are some historical precedents for other fractions of our society, and it never goes well.”
Dennis McFadden, a former consulting architect on the university’s Design Review Committee, resigned from his post of nearly 15 years in protest of the project.
“In the nearly 15 years I served as a consulting architect to the DRC, no project was brought before the committee that is larger, more transformational, and potentially more destructive to the campus as a place than Munger Hall,” McFadden wrote in his resignation letter.
“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. I cannot give tacit approval to this project, something I believe I would be doing by continuing my role as a consulting architect to the DRC.”
McFadden said that the design ignores this evidence and “seems to take the position that it doesn’t matter,” and that the building offers communal spaces for multiple groups of students, “but at the cost of any connection to the exterior.”
In an interview with CNN Business, Munger said that his designs create positive experiences for students, and that “you never saw a happier bunch of students” than those living in his similarly-designed residence hall at the University of Michigan.
“When an ignorant man leaves, I regard it as a plus, not a minus. He’s just plain wrong,” Munger told CNN, referring to McFadden’s departure. “All I can say is that I have been doing this for a long time, and no building has failed yet.”
The Santa Barbara chapter of the American Institute of Architects sent a letter to Chancellor Henry Yang on Friday expressing its strong opposition to the massive building.
“Our collective response to this proposal is not a critique of style, rather this is a critique of the unacceptable, inhumane living conditions that will no doubt, have (a) psychological impact on its inhabitants and the community at large,” the letter said. “This project shows complete disregard to the building’s scale and proportion in relationship to its immediate surroundings, and the negative impact it will have to the community in which it’s located.”
The letter states that the university is attempting to sell 10 floors of “densely-packed substandard cells as a housing ‘choice’” for undergraduate students, but the reality is that 20% of the future undergraduate body will end up living in Munger Hall because they have no other option.
Critics have said that the 11-story building does not fit in with the campus and surrounding neighborhoods of Goleta and Isla Vista, but the university said that Munger Hall will be “comparable to other tall buildings on campus,” including San Nicolas and San Miguel Residence Halls.
Kent Mixon, a local architect with Andrulaitis+Mixon architectural firm, said that he finds it “a huge red flag” that the university would give 100% of the design decision to someone who donated a relatively low portion of the project’s total cost.
“The money that he is offering up and donating is a huge, generous amount, but when you look at the entire project, it’s only 13% of the project cost, but (Munger) wants to take the ball and go home,” Mixon told Noozhawk. “If you look at this as a business, I can’t imagine that any company he’s involved with would give such a minority shareholder such a huge voice. It seems odd to me.”
Fraser said that most institutions have practices in place to mitigate and monitor the level of involvement and authority that any single donor has, and feels that the university is “completely disregarding” those practices.
Despite the endless criticism that Munger Hall has evoked from people across the country, the university has not backed down, and is “delighted to be moving forward with this project that directly addresses the campus’s great need for more student housing,” said UCSB spokeswoman Andrea Estrada.
“Munger Hall is designed to provide transformational co-living student housing that is affordable, safe and secure, within a mixed-use format,” she said in a statement to Noozhawk. “Munger Hall was designed for those students who want the experience of communal living but also desire the privacy of single bedrooms.
“The university recognizes that the living arrangements proposed for Munger Hall may not be right for everyone.”
Students will still have the option to choose among residence halls, campus apartments, and off-campus housing options, Estrada said.
Mixon said that he could never imagine going to a client and saying ‘half of you guys are going to like this project and half of you are going to hate it.’
In regards to the windowless rooms, the university said that every room that does not have an operable window is provided with a continuous fresh air supply at “approximately twice the rate of building and mechanical code minimums,” which could be argued as an improvement in air quality as it does not require a student to open the window for fresh air.
Mixon said his understanding is that the design calls for “some sort of programmed artificial” windows. “The way I understand it, it’s not reflective of what’s actually happening outside the building,” he said. “You don’t know if it’s raining outside when you get dressed for school in the morning.”
Design aspects aside, if approved and constructed on schedule, the dorm building will allow the university to meet its goal of building housing for 5,000 students by 2025, a promise made in the 2010 Long Range Development Plan contract with the city of Goleta and Santa Barbara County.
The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors was in litigation with the university last month due to allegations of the university violating the LDRP contract, but did not report any action after its closed-session talk in early October.
The city of Goleta announced on Friday that it plans to sue the university over the shortage of student housing.
The building’s 2025 completion date leaves some students wondering how the university plans to address the housing shortage in the meantime. Hundreds of students gathered on the steps of the Davidson Library on the UCSB campus on Friday to protest Munger Hall and the university’s lack of response during the housing crisis.
“Because Munger Hall is planned to be completed in 2025, that leaves four years between now and then for students who are out of housing to find somewhere to go,” third year UCSB student Izzy Bahamonde-Partlan told Noozhawk. “I think the reaction from all of us upon finding out was just horror.
“It was just disbelief, no one believed that we would be forced to be living in this prison of a dorm.”
Munger, a part-time Montecito resident, has a history of making major contributions to UCSB.
In 2014, he donated $65 million in stock to fund a housing facility for The Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics.
In 2016, he proposed to spend $200 million towards a $1.4 billion student housing plan that would have replaced the existing Anacapa, San Miguel, San Nicholas, Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa dorms with two tall buildings that also would have used artificial windows similar to the current proposal.
“I think it will be the best undergraduate housing in the world,” he said at the time. “In fact, if I didn’t think so, I wouldn’t have the slightest interest in giving it any money.”
That plan never came to fruition, but was similar in concept to Munger Hall.
Then, in late 2018, he donated the 1,800-acre Las Varas Ranch property bordering the Pacific Ocean along the Gaviota Coast to the university.
Munger is businessman and former real estate attorney, who for years has been the right-hand man of billionaire investor Warren Buffett.
The vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, he is an amateur architect who has donated to universities on the condition that they follow his architectural blueprints exactly.
Among his projects is a high-end development in Montecito called Sea Meadow, where he maintains a residence. Known as “Mungerville,” it includes 30 homes on 22 acres, built in the French Normandy style.
It sits just a few hundred yards east of the Four Seasons The Biltmore resort.
— Noozhawk staff writer Jade Martinez-Pogue can be reached at jmartinez-pogue@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
