Since last Thursday, when an architect's resignation letter went viral, the internet has been weighing in on the construction plan for a student dormitory at the University of California, Santa Barbara. "A giant, windowless prison", "Dormzilla", a "torture experiment": the internet has been weighing in on the construction plan for a student dormitory at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The planned skyscraper has become one of the most contentious architectural projects in the world, putting a monomaniacal, almost 100-year-old tycoon against a possible student uprising and igniting a furious discussion over what humans should, or can, tolerate in the sake of efficiency.

Charlie Munger, the billionaire who is supporting the project, thinks it will be a cutting-edge student home that will optimize space and foster social interaction. In contrast, Dennis McFadden, the architect who left in protest, labels it an unprecedented "social and psychological experiment" on schoolchildren, which he finds "unacceptable" from his "perspective as an architect, a parent, and a human being."

Munger is the vice-chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, the investing firm where he works as Warren Buffett's right-hand man. Munger, a self-taught architect, contributed $200 million to the Institution of California's housing-strapped campus on the odd – and some would say Faustian – condition that the university utilize a housing plan he created himself.

The planned dormitory would be the world's densest, with 4,500 students crammed into an 11-story structure with few windows in the bedrooms and communal spaces. The projected facility, which is expected to cost $1.5 billion in total, is akin to an ant farm without the glass: according to McFadden, 94 percent of occupants will have no windows in their cramped, single-occupancy rooms.

Rooms will feature luminous displays that replicate sunshine instead of windows, a notion inspired by the virtual portholes on Disney cruise ships, according to Munger. Small bedrooms, he claims, will encourage inhabitants to spend more time together in shared spaces.

The general population seems to disagree. Internet commentators have slammed the planned dorm as "barbaric," claiming that it would nurture Covid-19 and equating it to the panopticon, a controversial 18th-century notion for a jail where convicts are so closely monitored that they ultimately guard themselves.

The matter, which had been flying under the radar until McFadden's resignation letter was released to the press, blew up. McFadden, a well-known architect who had served on the UC Santa Barbara design review committee for 15 years, compared the projected Munger Hall to Bancroft Hall at the US Naval Academy, which is thought to be the world's biggest dormitory.

Bancroft "is composed of multiple wings wrapped around multiple courtyards with over 25 entrances," he added, housing roughly 4,000 students. "Munger Hall, on the other hand, is a single block with two entrances that houses 4,500 students." (UC Santa Barbara informed the Guardian that there would be "fourteen additional entrances/exits into and out of the building" in addition to the two "main" entrances.)

Munger Hall would have a population density of 221,000 people per square mile, according to McFadden, making it the world's sixth densest neighborhood, just ahead of a district in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He also noted that the dorm seems to have been built without concern for the surrounding geography: despite the fact that UC Santa Barbara is situated in a "spectacular coastal setting," students living within will be unable to view it.

According to research, a lack of sunshine and fresh air has a negative impact on humans. Dormitory occupants' mental health has been connected to their capacity to view green space, and rooms without windows disturb our sleeping cycles and make us melancholy and nervous.

Lack of windows also makes it more difficult to escape flames and may lead to the growth of mildew or carbon monoxide. It is unlawful to market a windowless room as a bedroom in several US jurisdictions, including New York City.

McFadden said in his letter that the institution seemed to be frightened by its benefactor and determined to push through the proposal. He added, "It was clear the [design review committee] was merely a formality." "The design was described as 100 percent complete, no approval was requested, no vote was taken, and no further submittals are planned or required," says the statement.

When I called McFadden, he claimed the letter was not meant for public consumption and that he had nothing to add to what he had written.

UC Santa Barbara has so far refused to back down. The university administration stated in a statement to the Washington Post, "We are delighted to be moving forward with this transformational project that directly addresses the campus's great need for more student housing."

"Every room that does not have an operable window (and even all bedrooms that do) is provided with a continuous fresh air supply at approximately twice the rate of building and mechanical code minimums," the administration stated in a second email to the Guardian. One may argue that this improves air quality since it eliminates the need for a student to open the window for fresh air." That is true, but only if one is unaware of the fact that windows open.

Opponents of the proposal are up against two very strong forces: a land-grant institution with almost 26,000 students and a billionaire worth $2.2 billion.

Unlike his mentor Warren Buffett, who is notorious for eating $3.17 McDonald's dinners and living in the same home since 1958, Munger prefers splurging on large-scale pet projects.

I was unable to contact him for comment; nevertheless, in a 2019 interview with the Wall Street Journal, Munger, who is 97 years old and mostly blind, slammed architects. Long queues at women's public facilities, he said, are an illustration of traditional architecture's flaws: He said, "What kind of moron would make the men's and women's bathrooms the same size?" "An ordinary architect!" says the narrator.

However, the warren-like floor plans for Munger Hall reveal that each cluster of eight beds will have just two single-occupancy bathrooms — each with one toilet and one shower.

Munger has some experience as a house developer, but he has never studied architecture properly or read a book on it, he told the Journal with apparent delight. He admitted that he may die before the project is finished, but he was convinced that it will be "widely regarded as the best in the world."

This isn't the first time Munger has put money into a project he designed himself. Munger Hall, as suggested, is a much bigger and more severe version of Munger graduate housing, a 630-student dormitory that Munger exhibited at the University of Michigan in 2015. Munger sees the previous project as proof of concept, a viewpoint that several of the students who have lived there disagree with.

One user recently remarked on an internet forum for University of Michigan students, "It was terrible." "Having too many roommates resulted in a lack of cohesiveness and standards. The absence of natural light was disheartening. "As far as billionaires go, Munger is about as out of touch as they come."

Another student commented that the "lack of windows messed up one of my roommates really badly with school and mental health and well-being." "If you're just in your room with no natural light," there was "no sense of time."

"The only two things about living in Munger that I disliked were the lack of windows and the fact that you couldn't get moisture out of the bathrooms," another added, "but those were reasons enough for me to leave." In addition, the room layouts at UCSB seem to be significantly worse than what we have here."

A petition to halt the UC Santa Barbara project has been signed by thousands of individuals. At the same time, student demonstrations have erupted at Howard University, a historically black institution in Washington, DC, over housing that they claim is uninhabitable and infested with mildew and insects.

Dormitories have a long history of being used for social engineering. Some dormitories in the United States were built with the intentional goal of enforcing racial or class segregation, while others were built with the goal of eradicating them, inspired by a progressive attitude.

John B Calhoun, a behavioral scientist from the United States, spent decades investigating how populations of rats and mice behave to limited surroundings. He set up a 101-square-inch cage with plenty of food and water but limited room for his most famous experiment, in which he introduced four breeding pairs of mice.

In less than a year, the colony had grown to more than 600 people. His mouse paradise started to look something closer to a dystopia as the cage got overcrowded. The mice grew sedentary, stopped reproducing, and turned to cannibalism. Some mice, dubbed "the beautiful ones" by Calhoun, stopped interacting with other mice and spent all of their time resting or grooming excessively. It became extinct when the population reached 2,200.

Thanks to J Oliver Conroy at The Guardian whose reporting provided the original basis for this story.