The colossal, proposed boondoggle of UC Santa Barbara’s Munger Hall student housing project, memorably nicknamed “Dormzilla,” has finally been laid to rest. On October 25, 2023, UCSB Vice Chancellor Garry MacPherson circulated an official memo to campus staff, students, and faculty announcing two architecture firms chosen to design campus housing for 3,500 students in accordance with UCSB’s 2010 Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) targets. The message, unwritten but obvious by omission, was that the new architects were retained to design an alternative to Munger Hall, whose demise had been rumored for months.
In today’s world of unsettling disruption, it is rare when a bad idea championed by an unfettered billionaire like Charlie Munger comes to a decisive end, thanks to genuine grassroots opposition. It is worth marking the moment, as a reminder that people can make a difference when they organize and thoughtfully make their views and voices heard.
On October 24, 2021, Munger Hall’s first public opponent grabbed national and international attention. Dennis McFadden, a consulting architect to UCSB for 15 years, wrote a scathing letter resigning from UCSB’s Design Review Committee stating he was “disturbed” by the Munger Hall plan and the lack of transparency in the project’s design and approval process. His fury at Munger Hall’s plan — for 4,500 students to be housed in a behemoth 1.7 million square foot building, where 94 percent of the tiny 7-by-8 foot bedrooms were windowless — was summed up in his letter stating that Munger Hall was “unsupportable from my perspective as an architect, a parent and a human being.” ...
Full story at https://www.independent.com/2023/11/09/goodbye-dormzilla-hello-student-housing/.
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*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/08/dormzilla-rip.html.
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All's well that ends well:
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