The proposed building looks like a Borg Cube (maybe that's why architects don't like it?), but that's only possible because most bedrooms are not on exterior walls. Instead, each bedroom is part of a suite that opens to a common area that does have a real window!
If you take a look at the footprint of residential buildings, you'll notice that they are almost never square. In fact, they have a fairly high aspect ratio.
In the case of Santa Barbara, the major constraint is land. If you wanted to house the same number of students, you'd either need to make the building 2-3x taller or use 2-3x as much land. Otherwise the buildings would be so close that the real windows would get no natural light (but, hey, at least you'd have a real window).
The issue is not the aspect ratio. The issue is that Charlie is obsessed with having every room connected to a common space which is the one with natural light. It would be trivial to have a slightly higher aspect ratio, maybe one or two more floors, and have the common areas in the center.
Apparently the original article included only 1/8th of the building's floor plan. Another commenter linked me this floor plan: https://www.dezeen.com/2021/11/02/architect-resigns-grotesqu...
As you can see, the surface area problem even worse!
Each bedroom is 8x10 feet, but the building is only 87 * 4 by 200 * 2 feet. That's 1496 linear feet of exterior wall. That's only enough for 187 exterior rooms per floor, while the design calls for approximately 512 (8 rooms per suite * 8 suites per house * 8 housed per floor).
> It would be trivial to have a slightly higher aspect ratio, maybe one or two more floors
You'd need to add not just "one or two" more floors, but increase the residential part of the building from 9 floors to 24!. Even if you made very narrow (6 foot) rooms, it would still require 18 floors.
> You can make a not so tall building with a budget of 330 000$ per room
And they're paying over $1 million per bathroom! I consider this a fairly disingenuous comment because the article is clear that the building includes space for other things like convertible classrooms and rec areas.
It would also be more expensive and have fewer rooms. In all likelihood, that would result in multiple people per room. All that makes the result unclear.