There are quite frequently things that one might intuitively expect to be in the regs, that aren't. Requirements for sprinklers, for example. As surprising as it may seem, there are still lots of places where sprinklers are not required in many buildings.
I don't know the situation in Santa Barbara, but I did email their fire department earlier with an inquiry about this topic. Hoping to hear something back.
Just looking at the proposed floorplan, in an emergency it would be a nightmare to get out. 7 kids trying to get out that one door with a giant table in the way while likely panicking? It screams deathtrap.
https://www.wiseinternational.org/nuclear-monitor/601/fire-p...
Kidding aside... given the size of the bedrooms, I get the impression that the students aren't meant to spend much time there aside from whatever amount of sleep college students are getting these days. The rest of their time would probably be spent in common areas that actually do have sunlight. Recalling my personal experience in college, where most of my time was already spent in common areas anyways, I don't see the lack of bedroom windows as that huge a problem.
This particular dorm design also seems to allow for more privacy than a traditional dorm does.
Yes, having shared bedrooms was particularly bad for my sleep. Not sure it's a good trade for a window though.
Honestly, this looks like a low security prison to me. Small cells and a day room for activities and socializing.
It is my sad duty to inform you of a four foot
Restriction on humanoid height
I hear the directors of Genetic Control have been buying all the
Properties that have recently been sold, taking risks oh so bold
It's said now that people will be shorter in height
They can fit twice as many in the same building site
(They say it's alright)"
(From "Get'em off my property", Genesis, Foxtrot, 1972)
No better way to get kids prepared for what comes ahead in their adulthood, huh?
94% of the residents won't have windows. Can you list any of these apartments that have that characteristic?
Surely building codes should mandate structural flaws and sinking foundations be fixed immediately.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/collapsed-miami-condo-had-...
Your comment is not making any point but your of lack of understanding.
A citizen doesn't care about challenges in construction or software or food contamination, it is our professional responsibility not to be negligent in our work.
Just an FYI it's unlikely an architect designed those foundations - there were probably engineers who tested the soil and gave its properties to a designing engineer who designed the foundation and both of those things are going to be tempered by what was common engineering practice at the time, and if the unstable soil situation was known about. My understanding is this situation is common in the area due to building practice at the time.
However I can comment on the culture of negligence - and I think it's getting worse.
Of course in every job, there is constant pressure from management to cut corners, junior colleagues or peers that mess up, deadlines to meet. It is very easy to say to avoid inspecting troubled areas, to say 'I've done my job' and avoid headache. Often it is not in anyone's job description to police this. The 'client' is typically none the wiser, and when problems arise 10 years down the line, often they can't be traced to anyone personally. The fact that we've replaced entire careers with gig economy, and people stay in one job less and companies now invest less in training that ever in the past 40 years means that there is even less accountability and more opportunity for mistakes.
Cases of unpredictable 'something bad happened' are extremely rare. Soviet government was warned that reactors used in Chernobyl were dangerous, Tepco was warned that sea wall protecting Fukushima was inadequate, Robert Lund warned that Nasa should not launch Space Shuttle Challenger, residents of Grenfell Tower warned about fire safety before they burned alive, same goes goes for Bhopal disaster, subprime loans and 2008, 737 Max and every other major event. It is also extremely rare that the consequences of these decision ever catch up with the top brass. Hence we have culture of negligence.
If said homeowner is trying to 'score points' by pointing out things they don't themselves understand, then they don't deserve any sort of benefit of the doubt.
>However I can comment on the culture of negligence - and I think it's getting worse.
I don't think we're talking about the same thing.
The hell kind of attitude is this? Someone goes through the effort of doing research to wrap their head around something with which many people don't even bother to acknowledge, and challenge you with a question that you as the professional are reasonably expected to be able to answer, and that's your response?
I hope you never work with me. We would not get along at all.
Not to mention that housing like this makes breeding grounds for the flu and other contagious illnesses. It's poorly timed given we're still battling Covid-19 worldwide.
Designing 100 year buildings around our current hysterical reaction to covid is just silly. Covid is over, time to move on.
History will harshly judge our reaction to covid and we will hopefully never repeat this awful public health policy again. The idea that we should be designing building with covid in mind is just a symptom of how much parts of society has lost the plot.
There is a reason though that I specifically called out all contagious illnesses. I can tell you that I got colds and the flu much more often in college than I do even in an open office. What's more, is students don't get sick days or time to catch up after an illness except in the most serious cases. I don't think it's illogical to think students (and their parents) don't want a dorm hotbed for contagions.
We don't know whether or not a community focused living design would help or hurt in this regard.
The covid/contagion question is interesting, because we DO know that designing for contagion safety is seemly inherently at odds with designing for social/emotional safety.
I think there's no clearly superior solution here, which tells me that building both types of systems would at least help further our understanding of the issues.
You are assuming a lot about whether the safety designs exist, or are adequate.
Uh, yes. Because there are laws governing how we can construct buildings in a safe way, and on the whole (c.f. the number of deaths in building fires over time) they work well. So I trust them.
As far as the putative logic flaw, I don't see it. Everything is a tradeoff, even "because money". Saving money on the dorm means lower tuition, more scholarships, more facilities elsewhere, maybe a few new endowed professorships, etc...
All this just to save $200/1500 (13%)? You can get a better discount than that at any retailer.
This is false statement. The architectural design was provided by Van Tilburg, Banvard, & Soderberg, AIA.
Did the university believe it couldn't otherwise house 4500 students for a billion dollars? Were there considerations involved other than student housing?
Presumably, they didn't say "Hi, Charlie Munger, please draw up a building for us on a napkin."
It's in fact a barb that Munger is a non-practicing architect, and apparently ruffled feathers with the professional architect on the committee.
Which, from working with some prima donna architects, I am both unsurprised and unsympathetic about.
Building engineers ensure everything is to code. Architects fret about whether it looks and feels right.
Some architects are good at making livable spaces, but an architecture degree doesn't guarantee that, and a lack of one doesn't preclude it.
The idea that architects don't worry about building code is absolutely incorrect on a project of any scale.
Prima donna "starchitects" worry less, but that's because they've hired other architects to handle it.
The norms of architecture that mandate e.g. windows for living spaces are here being violated so extremely someone's stepping down over it. This is therefore not an average project.
Concern seems reasonable.
In an ordinary apartment building, if you build it stupid, people won't want to live there. Then the landlord won't want to build it that way to begin with and if some fool does it anyway there will be a profit incentive to knock down the building and do it again.
This is a dorm. At at state school. The normal market forces aren't there. The landlord isn't going to be motivated by losing money. The tenants aren't in an ordinary market because dorms are often subsidized or have unique zoning that allows for lower cost than is legally permissible in other available housing and are likely to be closer to the school than other available housing. So you have to exceed a higher threshold of terrible before people will abandon them.
I can‘t imagine it wouldn‘t be very pleasant, as an example, someone smoking weed inside a dorm next to me without a way to vent it out.
It's difficult to design a large window, that will also open, that also insulates sufficiently to hit modern energy efficiency certifications.
YMMV, but I live in Seattle, where there has been a residential boom with plenty of towers, and I have never seen a residential apartment with non-functional windows. Every room will have at least one that can open (though for efficiency reasons they're usually casement windows, which are annoying in their own right)
This is just squeezing the undergrads to feed the rest of the machine more efficiently.
We're trying to save people that trust the system too much. Let me know if you know any people like that.
This is getting toward conspiracy theory territory. It's... a building code. Yes. Yes, I tend to trust building codes that have been keeping all of us safe in our homes and offices for the better part of a century. If building codes don't work, then where are the disasters in all the other buildings? You're saying that every other building in the USA in the 20th century "just happened" to be built safely, despite a thousand year history of terrible urban fires, and that regulation had nothing to do with it?
This isn’t some theoretical, conspiracy-laden issue. It’s an actual problem.
Yes! And by whom was it reviewed? And what happened when they reviewed it? I'm guessing the answers are "government regulators", and "they made sure it was fixed". And now it's being fixed.
You're literally citing the fact that safety regulation worked correctly as evidence... that it doesn't? Without the regulators you'd still be living in a deathtrap!
The safety regulation did not work because of the 71 people that died in Grenfell. What would you say if you lived there yourself "ah thats just bad luck for me"? what would you say if you lived there yourself and were one of the people that was reporting to the regulators about the problems in advance "I trust this system, I'm glad this system is based purely on trust, trust works so well, all should trust building codes because they are CODES, I like codes, they are infallible, its so cool that people exist to review the codes as well. This happens so rare due to the codes and not from simply being an uncommon occurrence that challenges building standard."
I don't really understand what your perspective here is to be honest. Not being wrong?
I think you misunderstood the poster - 100 people burned alive because the regulators were asleep at the wheel. That tragic disaster is the only reason his building was checked for adequacy, and it failed, along with thousands of others.
Right now there are thousands of buildings which were built and sold in breach of fire regulation, and the apartment owners are being saddled with 100% of the bill even when they own 25% of the apartment. In some cases the cost of repair exceeds the value of the property.
Building codes are state and municipal level laws. There is no harmonization. There are varying degrees of compliance based on competency, actual corruption conspiracies, and budget all of which changes decade over decade, building by building.
Many other regulations and individual behaviors have helped keep people safe. The way electronics work, the way people are educated, the public service announcements, the response times, and sometimes the building materials. Some things have actually become more flammable over the years.
Regarding building codes, 98 people just died in a literal building collapse in the Miami area. Your standard, if I understand correctly, is "that was just 1, where are the city wide Chicago fires", when the counterpoint is that this collapse prompted reviews of many properties and many more structural issues have been found in just that one municipality that threaten hundreds and thousands of people.
You shouldn't trust this process. You should root for the process to work decently since the probability of a disaster is low - this is the only area we agree! the incidents aren't happening! - but you should know that this is all luck. Continual luck in a system that barely works.
Large, multi-fatality fires are less common now, but they do still occur. I'd argue that we can always aspire to get better with regards to fire safety.
Money is really important, probably the single most important constraint for state universities.
Something's happening here that's more than just the money.
It's Mr. Burns hanging a "you're here forever" sign, or Kanye West ranting about his napkin design for the iPlane in the Oval Office while dropping a few "motherfucker"s.
Honestly... I think this is very much a taste thing. Is it so weird that I don't think this looks so bad at all? Yeah, yeah, no windows. But dense housing means lots of local goodies in the same building. These 4500 kids in their sardine rooms will have multiple food options, probably several gyms, rec rooms, libraries, etc... all "down the hall".
I spent a lot of time in college trudging to stuff through the snow (though to be fair not a lot of snow at UCSB). Physical access to amenities means more than I think suburban detached garage owners tend to remember.