This week, our Director Kevin Van Den Wymelenberg sat down with Vice to weigh in on a controversial design for a dormitory at UC Santa Barbara called Munger Hall, also known as “Dormzilla”. The Vice article explains that the dormitory is designed for maximum occupancy and most rooms will only contain digital windows.
In the article, Director Van Den Wymelenberg advocates for student health and comfort, telling Vice:
“The design of Munger Hall is inhumane,” said Kevin Van Den Wymelenberg, professor of architecture at the University of Oregon and director of the Institute for Health in the Built Environment. “The plan to use primarily fake windows will, at best, provide a diluted signal of outdoor daylight conditions (intensity and spectrum), and will in practice contribute to poor sleep quality, accumulated sleep debt, and a general disconnection from nature.” Van Den Wymelenberg added that the plan to use filtered mechanical ventilation—which the university boasted will make the air inside cleaner than that outside during wildfires—”will contribute to poor indoor air quality, increased abundance of human-associated microbes, and decreased diversity of the overall indoor microbiome,” all of which have been associated with negative health outcomes (Gordon, Aaron. “A University Had a Legally-Binding Plan to Solve Its Housing Crisis. Then a Billionaire Stepped In”. Vice Media, 2021).
Read the full Vice article here.
Read more on “Dormzilla” in a New York Times article here.