An American billionaire is defending his plans for a massive university dormitory in which 94 per cent of the 4,500 student bedrooms do not have a window.

Charlie Munger, a 97-year-old investor for Berkshire Hathaway and one of Warren Buffet’s closest colleagues, forked over a US$200 million donation to help construct the so-called “superdorm,” which is slated to be built on the University of California Santa Barbara campus.

Munger, who is not a licensed architect, handed over the massive donation with the stipulation that the building be built to his exact specifications. It must also bear his name.

His design is drawing ire and ridicule from media and architects, and it has prompted one of the project’s committee members to resign.

Dennis McFadden, a consultant architect that sits on UC Santa Barbara’s design review committee, resigned in late October, calling Munger’s designs a “social and psychological experiment with an unknown impact on the lives and personal development of the (students.)”

Although the project renderings show many windows on the outside of the building, each of the nine identical residential floors is divided into eight “houses,” with each house further divided into eight eight-person suites. Only the bedrooms that fall at the end of each row — about six per cent of all rooms — feature a window.

McFadden said he also takes issue with the building’s high density, claiming the size of the building and the number of occupants would qualify it as the eighth densest neighbourhood in the world.

“The project is essentially the student life portion of a mid-sized university campus in a box,” he wrote in his resignation letter.

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