Architects needs to be paid, something something, therefore we build bedrooms without windows. Sounds a bit like the underpants gnome reasoning to me.

I would understand if someone crunched the numbers and after a long and detailed reasoning they would have come up with this solution as the only one which can potentially work. But as far as I understand that is not what happened here. The donor has aspirations to be an architecture too and stipulated that this is the only way his money can be spent. No deviations from the plan are acceptable.

There is an infinity of solutions for any building program. Eliminating windows solves a couple of problems, but creates many others. Throughout human history, windowless cells have been reserved for very few situations, such as extreme punishment, or a cheap cabin on a Disney cruise (arguably overlapping cases).

I really don’t understand how everyone’s freaking out about the window and alluding to prison and punishment but cramming two or three strangers into one tiny, old room is perfectly fine as the status quo.

Imagine... you can solve for both!