Zaune wrote:The corridors between the bedrooms could stand to be a bit wider, because at the moment it looks as if two people couldn't walk abreast through them, and the dining area probably needs a little more elbow room. Otherwise that looks pretty good, though not something I'd personally choose to live in.
I took the measurements from my current living accommodations, then added some more space. Those hallways actually wider than they appear, and part of the illusion is that the doorways are also wider than standard – remember, I said I made them wide enough to accommodate a wheelchair if necessary. The areas aren't truly totally disability-accessible but someone injured could get in and out of these spaces (they'd be sleeping on a lower bunk, obviously). The hallways are actually on the wider end of residential standard in the US.
And keep in mind – this is the
densest living unit I'm proposing. Everything else is more spacious.
Hawkwings wrote:You are missing one very important thing in those rooms Broomstick. Desks. It's a workspace, a place to read, a place to operate your computer, and a place to personalize. Everyone should have a desk! It's just not your space until you have a desk.
Crap, I don't think I owned a desk until I was 43 or so... but then I owned an entire apartment/flat by the time I was 20 so yeah, not quite the same thing. OK, point taken, but I'm not sure I want to redesign the bedrooms yet again – really, you can have an assigned space of your own for work projects outside of your sleeping quarters. I'll keep that in mind, maybe make an “office pod” or something. People really should use their bedrooms for
sleeping, not working.
Another thing: clothes. Honestly in this sort of situation I don't really see us keeping our entire wardrobes, and the laundry room you have in there does not seem necessary. What would be more efficient is a laundry service where you drop off your dirty clothes in a bag with your name on it, and it's returned the next day cleaned and folded.
I understand what you're saying, but again, efficiency may be less important than redundancy. For damn sure some of the appliances are going to die before 10 years are up. Would
really suck if something major went wrong with the main laundry, wouldn't it? By making washing facilities available people can, wow, take responsibility for their own stuff instead of having to assign yet one more menial task to someone, and it spreads out the laundry facilities so one bad thing won't have us all washing our underwear in the sink for the next eight years.
A larger, more industrial laundry facility would be a good idea for, say, linens for the medical pod (in fact, I'd even suggest making it a part of the medical pod) or other major users but regular folks can take care of their own clothes. We may have to resettle the world in 10 years, we need to keep people thinking in terms of self-sufficiency and taking care of their own stuff at the same time we're promoting community and cooperation.
My thoughts about the kitchen: if you're housing a bunch of mostly male teenagers - young adults, don't expect them to cook. The kitchen will be mostly for snacks, microwaveable meals, and the occasional culinary adventure. Instead, expect 90% of the meals to be eaten in the dining halls.
Except there's no reason we couldn't have a dorm pod with mostly
female teenagers/young adults. It could be a group of post 25 year old adults. It could be a mix of people.
Keep in mind, too, that the “kitchen pod” could also be attached to less dense living spaces, perhaps shared by two families (we
do have families on SD.net)
And, again – if the main industrial sized kitchen breaks down the kitchen pods will serve as backup. And why not make provision for “culinary adventures”? As noted, keeping people busy and morale up will be vital. Hell, I don't care if the dorm decides to “cater” meals by “take away” from the dining hall, or do their own cooking, or subsist on MRE's. That's why I've also been mentioning hot plates, slow cookers, and so on. We really do want to keep options open for people. I'd expect cooking fads to come and go over a decade, with people cycling from eating nothing but pre-packaged to cooking from scratch and back again several times.
Frankly, if people actually were cooking everything from scratch the kitchen pod as depicted wouldn't be adequate. We'll need some “industrial” kitchens for processing raw materials into foods like pasta or flour anyway.
One TV is not enough for 24 people. While watching whatever you want in your own room at your desk (hint hint) is an option, sometimes you want to watch a movie with friends and someone has already hogged the TV.
Ya know – this is a survival bunker, not a luxury condo. I expect there will be a lot of laptops and small scale computers around. The big screen would be for parties and things like “townhall” type meetings and news as much as for entertainment. And ya'll will just have to learn how to share a little bit.
Jeepers, when I was in a college dorm we had one TV per floor – that was about one per forty people. It IS possible to share, especially as there will be
ample other facilities for your entertainment. You may have to get off your butt and walk down the hallway to get to them, but you need the exercise anyway. These are not jail cells, people will be able to wander around at will unless there's some sort of emergency. In fact, the
last thing we want people to do is sit in their bedroom all day, that's just not healthy. By forcing people to get up and move around you promote physical and mental health.
Here's what I'd suggest for the dorm area to fix some of these problems. Two rooms, assigned to four people.
I'll be designing two and four person accommodations, in addition to the single-person one on page 2 of this thread, and some family arrangements as we will want to keep families together as much as possible (well, until the kids mature into late teen years and its appropriate for them to be treated as adults)
If at all possible (which it is) we should give each room its own sink, as things like brushing teeth, getting some water, washing hands (you do want to make it really convenient for people to wash their hands in these confined and sickly quarters) and such can be distributed instead of taking up bathroom space.
The four-person dorm units have been redesigned with a sink and a small table area.
Remember that this is not the same as a college dorm or a military barracks. This is the place that you are going to be (almost) every night for ten years.
Except you
don't – there
will be other forms of accommodations, you
will be allowed to relocate, you are
not locked into one bunk bed for ten years.
As for things for people to do... there will be plenty to do! Plenty of menial jobs that is. We need people to clean, people to wash clothes, people to wash dishes, people to cook huge batches of meals in the dining halls, people to fix broken lights and broken TVs and broken furniture and broken sinks, people to stock the convenience store pod with soap and shampoo and toothpaste and kleenex and sticky notes and pens, people to take out the trash and sort the trash and recycle things and wash out bottles for reuse, people to move things from point A to point B, and so on and so forth.
And everyone, from highest to lowest, should be required to do some of that menial work, and rotate their assignments. This will also cut down on abuses, as those who have to clean up the messes are less inclined to make them in the first place. In fact, any egregious transgressions of social norms in regards to cleanliness and order should probably entail a stint on nasty clean-up duty for longer than the usual rotation period.
There will be a very small minority, 5% maybe, of people who are actually going to be engaging in thinking work.
Only if we
let that happen. There is no reason we can't require educational pursuits along with menial chores. There is no reason we can't require 10 or 20 hours of research/education per week just as we'd require scrubbing toilets. Nor does it all have to be sedentary – there are martial/fighting arts to be learned, learning to use tools, dance, language lessons, exercise classes.... everyone should wind up learning, and everyone should wind up teaching at some point.
And even then, it'll be stuff like managing the hydroponics garden and ensuring that it provides a steady output of food
>snort< I visit my hydroponics set up once every 3-4 days for, at most, an hour. It's not
that hard. Yes, we'll have a much larger set up and because we'll actually be dependent on it to some degree it will require more labor, but trust me, a LOT of that is grunt labor.
That, and because everyone will have a stake in the garden and probably do some time there we might want to have periodic voting in regards to what and how much of what is grown there. We'll have to have a chief farmer or agriculturalist, or perhaps a committee of three, to keep things from getting nuts and act as primary coordinators but we really want everyone to learn as much as possible about running the Bunker. Why? Because accidents happen, people get ill or injured, and a it's possible someone might just up and die for no discernible reason. We
must cross train because over ten years there will be inevitable losses.
We might have two doctors and two dentists, each with two assistants. We might have five police officers, with another 20 part-time. But we're going to have a full-time maintenance staff of like 200.
Yes, and the docs and dentists and their assistants will be spending part of their time training potential replacements.
And the “maintenance staff” will be all 1,000 people. Some folks will have more of that duty than others, but
everyone needs to help out with it in order to keep the place running.
