Architecture jumped the shark a long time ago, and it keeps getting worse.
The Santa Barbara Independent reported that University of California, Santa Barbara has received backlash since initiating a dorm project that many have described as “destructive” and “a grotesque, sick joke.”
To remedy struggles connected to the housing crisis wrecking Santa Barbara, the university accepted a $200 million donation from 97-year-old billionaire Charles Munger to build a dormitory on the condition that UCSB follows his design plans exactly.
The planned structure holds up to 4,500 students in an 11-story, 1.68-million-square-foot space. That’s a population density of 221,000 students per square mile. Making matters worse, 94 percent of rooms will have no windows. That is peak irony from a university whose motto is “Fiat lux” — “Let there be light.”
The consequences could be dire. One would hope this is obvious in an age of focusing on collegiate mental health. In a July public meeting, a student said with blunt honesty, “You are asking for students to get depression and commit self‐harm. Strongly reconsider this entire plan.”
Consulting architect Dennis McFadden said in an open letter at his resignation, “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.” Receiving national attention, The New Yorker’s architecture critic Paul Goldberger called it “a jail masquerading as a dormitory.” Six of UCSB’s own architecture history professors created a petition to stop the plan in its tracks, calling out the administration for its plot to construct “small windowless cells, without natural light, natural air, or views of the world outside – all things that countless studies, not to mention common sense and experience, tell us are essential to human physical and mental wellbeing.”
While the plan is terrible on its face, Munger’s response is even more vile — and it speaks volumes of what is happening to our idea of human need.
When did the goal of housing — of home — become the creation of merely the “endurable;” the farce of changing the sun; the façade of indistinguishability between artificial and real?
Munger, who describes his relation to architecture as “a kind of hobby,” referred to his detractors as “idiots.” The billionaire so-called philanthropist commented that the windowless rooms are “quite endurable, especially with good ventilation.”
The investor believes the presence of artificial, virtual windows is a good replacement for lost natural light. Munger told The New York Times, “If you want it romantic and dim, you can make it romantic and dim. When in your life have you been able to change the sun? In this dorm, you can.” Munger said to Architectural Record, “[W]ith a curtain hanging over it you [can’t] tell if it was artificial or real.”
Therein lies the problem.
When did the goal of housing — of home — become the creation of merely the “endurable;” the farce of changing the sun; the façade of indistinguishability between artificial and real? When did the search for convenience, the desire for the dollar, overcome the drive for giving students a place to live and to live fruitfully? When did it triumph over the basic, common-sense assumption that people need a window, natural light, and fresh air?
It’s important that we, in our desire to obtain or to save money, do not confuse the human with the gopher. The gopher is content with habitation. The human needs home.
When it comes to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, gophers and humans both seek to fulfill the bottom four rungs. For instance, the gopher’s hole and the human’s home both provide warmth and rest (physiological), physical security (safety), a place for family (social belonging), and a sense of independence (esteem). But that is the end of the line for the gopher. The human needs more.
Critics are right. UCSB is gambling with disaster.
Maslow’s highest rung, self-actualization, is unique to humans. The gopher will never seek, theorize, or hope to be the “ideal gopher” like a parent seeks to be the “ideal parent” or the artist desires to be the “ideal artist.”
The gopher is content with a hole that is hidden from snakes and weasels, has quick access to your grandmother’s garden, keeps it warm, and provides a nesting ground for its helpless, blind young. The gopher does not care for trinkets, knick-knacks, or heirlooms. It simply doesn’t need a potted plant, a picturesque Santa Barbara beach sunset, or that solar-induced natural warmth reminding one to step outside. Those are solely for man and his “ideal home.”
This is Munger’s issue. He sees human need as the same as gopher need. Munger’s vision is one where humans seek merely the “endurable” — that which is palatable, stomachable. In his effort to cover his plan’s physiological inadequacy of leaving the room without sunlight, he veils this with the guise and vain novelty that the student can “change the sun.”
Critics are right. UCSB is gambling with disaster.
As long as architects, universities, billionaires, urban planners — you name it — continue to see humans as the psychological equivalents of rodents, the worst will follow. Life is more than just the “endurable,” and the sooner we realize that, the better.
Maslow, in his psychological hierarchy, notes that one cannot seek the higher rungs as the lower needs are not fulfilled. This is a problem for university, as the whole of student life is searching for actualization — pursuing goals, developing talents, and the like. Getting the so-called amenity of “romantic and dim lighting” (3rd rung of love and social belonging) for the search of the “ideal spouse” (5th rung of self-actualization) is to no avail as the resident is constantly destitute from Vitamin D deficiency (1st rung of physiology). No amount of artificial distraction will overcome this diabolical poverty of essentials.
In his preoccupation with utility, Munger lost track of the human desire for self-actualization. He confused us for gophers, living in their utilitarian shanties. Munger abandoned the “ideal” for the “endurable,” resigning students to a prison-like artificial existence and squelching the actualized human craving for beauty. Regardless of how many Vitamin D pills a student chokes down, she won’t escape the feeling of deprivation of the most basic beauty to earthly existence: sunlight.
As long as architects, universities, billionaires, urban planners — you name it — continue to see humans as the psychological equivalents of rodents, the worst will follow. Life is more than just the “endurable,” and the sooner we realize that, the better.
