The difference between Munger Hall [2] and the new UCSB dorm [1] is vast. For starters you go from a 7 person common room being your nearest real light to a 60-70 person common room being your nearest indoor natural light. The Michigan dorm has a fraction of the people living in it total, larger rooms and amenities that would be hard to include in the UCSB simply because there's so many more people in that doom.
You expect a quality difference between graduate apartments and undergraduate dorms but saying one is well received (with complaints about the lack of windows and lights in the bedrooms btw) so this different design must also be secretly ok is stretching things.
The building is apparently in the same mould as a highly-rated[1] one already in use at the University of Michigan. The people (graduate students?) who live there seem to like it more than any other campus housing option.
It is not in the same mould at all. Reposting my previous comment:
OK, I found an article with a floorplan[1]. This thing is not at all comparable to the Michigan dorms. Recall, in the Michigan dorms you have an apartment housing 7 people with a spacious, well-lit living room (6 windows, but the count isn't important.) Sure, you don't have a window in your bedroom, and that sucks, but to see the sun you just go through that one door.
But in this proposed building? Look at that insane floor plan[2]! It looks like a maze! If you're in one of those inner rooms, you exit your bedroom (no windows) into your apartment's common area (no windows), exit that to a long corridor that eventually leads to your "House's" common area, which finally has windows. But is the opposite way from the building's exit.
I wonder if the rendering is a lie, or there are a small number of bedrooms that have private windows in them?
I think the main mistakes here are that he made the building bilaterally symmetrical and it should instead be along four quadrants. Additionally, there should be an atrium in the center providing additional windows for the middle of the building.
That many students sharing a single TV every evening is not going to work out, and if you want a 'study space' (which is psychologically healthy and strategic), you'll have to do it in the main entertainment area or leave the building.
Each 'house' at this size should have 2 public areas, and there should probably be one house at each corner, and one at each face, rather than 4 corners and 2 on the same face.
Smaller with fewer people sharing a common space and better amenities. The differences between the two designs are vast. Also a lot of people complain about the lack of windows in the rooms but give it a positive review because of amenities. I've talked more about the differences in other comments I won't rehash.
