In the realm of wise investors and business moguls, Charlie Munger, the billionaire business partner of Warren Buffett, is a source of valuable advice. His interests span wide, but they all converge on a singular focus: the pursuit of wealth, happiness and the avoidance of making dumb mistakes. During the 2023 Berkshire Hathaway Inc. annual meeting, Buffett expressed his desire to be born in the present day, considering it a superior world compared to any before. He acknowledged that modern comm

  • Sami@lemmy.zip
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    1 year ago

    He also tried to design a windowless mega-dorm as a weird social experiment of sorts. All around great guy

    In his October 25 resignation letter to UCSB Campus Architect Julie Hendricks, Dennis McFadden ― a well-respected Southern California architect with 15 years on the committee ― goes scorched earth on the radical new building concept, which calls for an 11-story, 1.68-million-square-foot structure that would house up to 4,500 students, 94 percent of whom would not have windows in their small, single-occupancy bedrooms.

    The idea was conceived by 97-year-old billionaire-investor turned amateur-architect Charles Munger, who donated $200 million toward the project with the condition that his blueprints be followed exactly. Munger maintains the small living quarters would coax residents out of their rooms and into larger common areas, where they could interact and collaborate.

    https://www.independent.com/2021/10/28/architect-resigns-in-protest-over-ucsb-mega-dorm/

    Thankfully it did not get approved.

    • CADmonkey@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      with the condition that his blueprints be followed exactly

      As a draftsman, lol.

      First of all, it’s obvious he has no idea what he’s doing with his use of the word “blueprint”. They haven’t been blue for like 40 years. Second of all, there is always an engineer to translate the fever dream of the architect to something that won’t collapse when it’s built. Nobody follows the architect’s prints “exactly”, and a big part of the reason is the architect just designs the building, they are less involved with the nuts and bolts level of assembling the building. There are drawings for all sorts of fiddly things that end up in the final drawings for a building.

      • Sami@lemmy.zip
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        1 year ago

        A podcast that covered the topic said that the plan was more expensive per student that what the state’s existing housing designs cost to build. Also, his donation only covered like 20% of costs.

          • It’s a common problem. Rich guys routinely presume they have more expertise then they do regarding their vanity projects, some of which actually get built.

            The Behind the Bastards ep on Stockton Rush and Oceangate, and his failure to acknowledge his submersible is deteriorating across several missions serves as an amazing cautionary tale to this effect.