The University of California, Santa Barbara, hired architects to design new dorms following a decision last year to drop a proposed design that critics said looked like a jail with few windows.

The architecture firms Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and Mithun issued renderings for new student housing designs on March 22, featuring a cluster of low-rise buildings. The buildings will be staggered in their position on the lot, providing extensive views of the nearby Pacific Coast.

The decision to include extensive windows with views of the outdoors is significant because the rejected dorm design, created by the late Berkshire Hathaway executive Charlie Munger, was lambasted for its lack of windows. The state-owned college decided last year to drop Munger’s design after complaints from students, faculty and alumni.

Munger, an amateur architect, designed the 1.7 million-square-foot dorm called Munger Hall in collaboration with architects at VTBS and promised to donate $200 million to the university if it used his design. Dennis McFadden, a Southern California architect, resigned from a UCSB design review board in 2021 because of Munger’s design, saying it was “unsupportable from my perspective as an architect, a parent and a human being.”

Munger died in November at age 99.

The new designs created by SOM and Mithun “will provide critically needed affordable, apartment-style housing and an amenity-rich program,” Mithun associate principal Damian Possidente said in a statement.

“A central pedestrian promenade slices through the buildings north-to-south at the campus level, creating a welcoming series of outdoor gathering spaces with views of the Santa Ynez Mountains,” SOM said in a description of the dorms’ design.

The 25,000-student UCSB is struggling with a lack of student housing, a problem caused in part because of expensive real estate costs in the area and the college’s relatively small campus at 1,000 acres. Munger defended his design by saying the 3,500-bed dorm would provide as many student beds as possible on a small site.

But critics said the Munger-designed dorm would cram far too many college students into a single building, that the design would cut off students’ access to sunlight and that the building had too few entrance and exit doors, creating a safety issue.

SOM, based in Chicago, has completed other student housing designs for UCSB, including San Joaquin Villages and Tenaya Towers. Seattle-based Mithun has designed student housing for Princeton University and the University of California in Los Angeles and Irvine.

The two firms’ proposal for UCSB calls for a 2,140-bed complex scheduled to open in 2027 and an additional 2,000-bed housing complex to open in 2029. The timetable is pending design approval by the University of California Board of Regents, which is scheduled to vote on the proposal in May.

Olin McKenzie, partner, and Tannar Whitney, principal, are leading the effort for SOM. Bill LaPatra, partner, and Damian Possidente, principal, are leading the effort for Mithun.