The S.S. Munger Lifts Anchor for Santa Barbara
This is a story about clumsy design, or perhaps about the perils of mishandling density. Maybe it’s really about the tyranny of corporate money and its corruption of a public institution’s democratic design review process. Whatever it may be, it is a timely story, one that attracted national attention. And yet, it is also an old story whose local context has gone missing from the national news coverage.
On October 30, 2021, the Washington Post ran a story about a proposed student dormitory at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). It warranted national news due to the designer of the project, Charlie Munger, a longtime associate and Vice Chairman to Warren Buffett. The story also ran on USA Today, the New York Times, Curbed, and other media outlets, which was remarkable for a proposed project on a college campus. Munger pitched the project as “visionary” and attached a $200 million donation to help defray the $1.4 billion construction bill. The donation was contingent on an unusual condition: the design must be accepted as proposed, regardless of comments or critiques during the architectural review process.
Figure 1. Render and ground floor plan of the proposed dormitory building, Munger Hall, for the University of California, Santa Barbara. Images were produced by Van Tilburg, Banvard & Soderbergh, AIA. Critics pointed out that exterior views of the building neglect to show neighboring buildings, which are sure to be dwarfed by Munger Hall.
The proposed dormitory will house 4500 students, approximately 20 percent of UCSB’s undergraduate population. It will have parking for bicycles but not automobiles, and within its compact eleven-story tall footprint Munger Hall will offer a bakery, a dedicated room to store surfboards, recreation rooms, multi-purpose rooms, reading rooms, “convivial kitchens” on each floor, a fitness center on the roof, and miscellaneous communal areas filled with natural light. Each dormitory floor will have a “Great Room” on the perimeter of the building’s floor plan, one for each dormitory subdivision accommodating 64 students (the subdivisions are called “Houses”). Each student will get their own room within their House, grouped into suites of 8 students sharing two bathrooms and a kitchenette, all organized in the center of the floor plate. Munger and his team pitched the design as a bold new vision for college dormitories suited to the challenges of the twenty-first century and to California’s housing crisis. They assert that an economy of scale will ensure rapid construction and a price tag that will be easy on the University’s budget, facilitated by a prefabricated system of modular “pods” assembled on site. Munger’s team formally presented the project to the University’s Design Review Committee (DRC) on October 5, after months of behind-the-scenes communication with the University (Figures 1-5).
Figure 2. View of one of three Reading Rooms on the eleventh floor accessed from the roof garden. Images produced by Van Tilburg, Banvard & Soderbergh, AIA.
Figure 3. Floor plan of a typical residential floor, one of nine such floors in the proposed building. A double-loaded corridor occupies the center of the building giving access to eight “Houses” each organized by its own double-loaded corridor. On the right is a rendering of a single-occupancy dorm room. Of the 512 dorm rooms on a typical floor like this, only 32 will have windows allowing natural light. Images produced by Van Tilburg, Banvard & Soderbergh, AIA.
Figure 4. Floor plan of a typical House, one of eight such subdivisions on each dormitory floor. The double-loaded corridor allows access to eight “Suites,” each with its eight single-occupancy dorm rooms. Each Suite is equipped with two toilets and two showers. The House’s corridor terminates by giving access to a “Great Room” that includes a laundry room, a “Convivial Kitchen,” emergency access to stairwells on either side, and a game room. Unlike the Suites and the main corridor (labeled “Gallery” in the plan), the Great Room enjoys natural light. Images produced by Van Tilburg, Banvard & Soderbergh, AIA.
Figure 5. Author’s elevation diagram of Munger Hall situated on its proposed site next to Harder Stadium and the Fire and Police Department Buildings across the street. Image by the author, superimposed under the project team’s site plan.
The project met an uneven reception. Dennis McFadden, a local architect on the DRC resigned. He submitted a sharp-tongued letter to the University which made its way to local newspapers. Soon, students circulated a petition to stop the project, and faculty in the Department of History of Art and Architecture presented their own letter objecting to both the project and the exceptional process the University employed to realize it. That was followed by the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIASB) sending a letter to Chancellor Henry Yang protesting the project. On November 5, a 500-strong student rally formed on the steps of the library and marched to the center of campus, protesting the Munger Hall project.
Why the ire? What is the big problem? Critics pointed to the building’s poor siting as well as its uninspiring fenestration and insensitive relationship it will have to its surroundings. Those were just the minor issues. They zeroed in on the submarine-like living conditions inside the building. None of the suites will have windows, and 94 percent of dorm rooms will be equipped with a fake window in place of an actual window. Munger’s team fashioned the design on naval architecture, the state cabins on cruise ships in particular, and emphasized the efficiency of the compact plan, but the resigning architect criticized the lack of natural light and poor ventilation of the nearly 4,500 dorm rooms. UCSB’s architecture history faculty have compared the scheme to Cold War housing towers in Eastern Europe, to detention facilities of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and to the worst examples of mass urban housing projects of mid-twentieth century USA where residents were conceptualized more as inmates than as citizens. One called the project an “abomination,” another referred to it as “Monster Hall,” while another related confidentially that “UCSB is making a national ass of itself.” In an interview, Munger addressed the tradeoff of compactness for natural light by saying, “If you maximize the light, you get fewer people in the building.”
“This is a story about clumsy design . . . . about the tyranny of corporate money and its corruption of a public institution’s democratic design review process. . . . it is also an old story whose local context has gone missing from the national news coverage.”
UCSB barrels forward despite the objections. It plans to accept the donation and its terms, expecting to move students into Munger Hall in 2025.
But there is local context missed by the national coverage. Although the state of California has been recently gripped by a crisis of inadequate housing, students at UCSB have endured a local housing crisis for decades. The University offers dormitory housing to freshmen and some sophomores, but juniors and seniors are required to find housing in the adjoining town of Isla Vista. That unincorporated beachside community of nearly two square miles owes its existence almost entirely to the population of undergraduate students it shelters, and census data lists its population at 23,000 in 2010 (UCSB’s pandemic strategy to teach remotely kept many students away during the 2020 census, ringing in at just over 15,000). That makes it a dense landscape: 12,000 people per square mile. Rents are high and local zoning ordinances restrict construction primarily to one- and two-story single family detached homes interspersed with modest apartment buildings, all of it built after UCSB opened its doors in the late 1950s. Less than 3 percent of the properties there are occupied by owners; the vast majority are renters packed into this landscape. Density is achieved by adding beds to bedrooms and to other rooms. It is not unusual for a three bedroom home to be rented by twelve or more residents, some living in garages, in dining rooms, in living rooms, and some stuffing their beds into closets and attics.
Much of this stretches the limits of legality but has been condoned by the University for decades. Isla Vista is governed by a “special” zoning ordinance devised in the early 1960s to encourage an increase in density, but even that liberal code is flaunted. The zoning ordinance limits the height of construction to two floors except at the perimeter of the town or by code variance, and it limits the number of bedrooms on a property. That limit is tied to the number of parking spaces required on site, one per bedroom. Even that ratio is undermined. It is not unusual for a property owner to hire work done after a project has been completed and signed off by the county’s building department, reconfiguring common space so that it can be used as bedrooms. A dining room with a door functions as a bedroom while a generously scaled living room is subdivided with walls to generate one or two more bedrooms. The upstairs walk-in closet is installed with a door to serve as a bedroom, and a platform installed above allows for yet another bed to be accessed by ladder, snugly fit under the gable roof. Strolling down an Isla Vista street feels like Super Bowl Sunday or Thanksgiving: cars are parked everywhere, except in the garages. Those spaces provide room for one or more beds (and thus, revenue for property owners) (Figures 6-16).
Figure 6. Floor plans from the approved set of permit drawings for the two-story apartment building at 6597 Del Playa Ave. in Isla Vista, submitted in 1996. A “Dining Room,” “Living Room,” and “Garage” are labeled spaces.
Figure 7. Permitted Plan Arrangement: Author’s color-coded plan diagram of the Del Playa apartment building showing bedrooms and walk-in closets on the second floor, and common spaces on the ground floor.
Figure 8. As-Built Arrangement: Author’s color-coded plan diagram of the Del Playa apartment building showing bedrooms instead of common spaces and the garage on the ground floor, and noting that bedrooms were constructed above the walk-in closets on the second floor (accessed by ladders from inside the bedrooms). On the ground floor, the large kitchen doubles as a living/dining space.
Figure 9. Street view of 6597 Del Playa in Isla Vista. The building depicted in the plans (6597 Del Playa Ave.) is on the right, and the building on the left is identical but mirrored. The number of cars parked in the driveway exceeds SR-M-18 zoning (and expresses the density of residents within). Photograph by the author.
Figure 10. Floor plans from the approved set of permit drawings for the two-story townhouse building at 6598 Del Playa Ave. in Isla Vista, submitted in 1996. Both the dwelling unit on the ground floor and the upper floor are entered through the kitchen.
Figure 11. Permitted Plan Arrangement: Author’s color-coded plan diagram of the Del Playa townhouse showing a dining room and living room on each floor and a garage on the ground floor.
Figure 12. As-Built Plan Arrangement: Author’s color-coded plan diagram of the Del Playa townhouse showing bedrooms replacing the dining and living rooms of the permitted plans. Additional bathrooms were also added.
Figure 13. Street view of the Del Playa townhouse in Isla Vista (6598 Del Playa Ave.). The garage is used as a bedroom and the cars parked in front of the garage door belong to residents. Two cars are on the sidewalk and one’s rear bumper is in the street. Photograph by the author.
Figure 14. Street view of the Del Playa townhouse in Isla Vista. The stairs grant access to the kitchen in the upstairs unit. The cars in the driveway in front of the stairs belong to residents, and here too they occupy the sidewalk and push into the street. Photograph by the author.
Figure 15. Interior view of the Del Playa townhouse in Isla Vista. The photograph was captured from the door at the top of the stairs looking into the kitchen and its two refrigerators. The space doubles as the living room, and the wall and door behind the television are not shown on the permit drawings. Photograph by the author.
Figure 16. Interior views of the second floor bedroom of the Del Playa townhouse in Isla Vista. The ladder grants access to the platform under the gable roof which serves as an additional bedroom. Photographs by the author.
Munger Hall’s compact floor plans would seem to complement the existing strategies of density in Isla Vista. Circumventing the usual design review process to move the project speedily along harkens back to 1962 when the County of Santa Barbara suspended the Architectural Board of Review to fast-track housing projects in Isla Vista, allowing land owners to keep pace with UCSB’s student population growth. Now in the 2020s, the carrot of dwelling in a room of one’s own, free of one or more roommates, even without a window of one’s own, may prove enticing to UCSB students. As the letter penned by architecture history faculty protesting the ambitious dormitory project lamented, the designers of Munger Hall seek to normalize the worst aspects of Isla Vista’s density. As an architectural volume the S.S. Munger may tower uncomfortably over its neighbors on the UCSB campus, but as a real estate practice maximizing density over livability, it will fit right in.
