

Dorm Room Design and Construction - wyclif
http://web.mit.edu/zacka/www/room.html

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tiddchristopher
The room's pretty neat, but I'm having trouble understanding why a college
student would put this much effort into something that needs to be torn down
at the end of the year. I get the "because I can" hacker attitude, but as
someone heading back to school tomorrow, I've got to say I would never put
most of that stuff in my room. Hardwood flooring: who has the money to blow on
that in college? It's one thing to optimize a room for comfort and utility.
It's another to install unneeded gadgets.

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rdl
Plenty of MIT people stay in the same room for 2-4 years. (usually freshmen
were in one room sometimes with a roommate, then if you made compromises you
could get a single for years 2 to n (n = 4 or 5 I guess)

~~~
Symmetry
It really depends on the specific dorm. IIRC you could easily have the same
room for 4 years there, more easily than some other dorms. It (and Random
where I stayed) tend to have more of a culture of making changes to the rooms
and building - like making murals.

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dotBen
From <http://web.mit.edu/zacka/www/images/DSC_0567.jpg>, it looks as though
all of the load is distributed between the single middle-rear post and the two
ceiling drops.

I'm really surprised that was enough to support the weight of a person,
possibly two.

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twidlit
on that rare but not impossible moment, will it support three people?

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suking
This is MIT - I'm surprised it ever needed to fit 2 :-).

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Symmetry
That... doesn't really apply to EC. When I was a freshmen I thought of it as
the "pot and people naked at parties" dorm. Which was actually pretty unfair,
and there's a lot of variation between the floors there.

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brimpa
It seems this is the guy who also did the unauthorized security audit of the
Boston subway system.

<http://web.mit.edu/zacka/www/mbta.html>

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mrb
Yes. Good find!

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chopsueyar
That makes me jealous and angry.

Somebody just throwing away Eames chairs?

Were the threaded rods and other "scrap" metals "found" on campus?

Did you buy the flooring? What was the total cost in materials?

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ender7
Oh god, put some tennis balls on those threaded rods sticking out from the
bed.

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pnathan
Wow, if I had done anything like that, the housing authority would have found
new and unique ways of kicking me out.

Really cool though.

~~~
Symmetry
They would if you tried anything like this in, say, Simmons. They're much more
relaxed about student alterations to the older dorms like EC, though.

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there
_Restored Herman Miller Eames lounge chair for reading, having guests over,
etc. It might be the Plycraft version, I can't really tell._

it's a plycraft replica. they are easy to spot because the chair base only has
4 legs, while a genuine eames lounge chair sold by herman miller or vitra will
have 5 legs on the chair and 4 on the ottoman.

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ghoerz
Actually, he mentions the base was taken from another chair.

 _I found two Herman Miller Eames chairs being thrown away. The bases were
missing, so I pulled two chrome chair bases off some old desk chairs and
mounted one of the Eames chairs onto a base._

~~~
endtwist
It's definitely a Plycraft[1]; look at the armrests vs a real Eames[2].

[1] <http://p2.la-img.com/21/21630/7445736_1_l.jpg>

[2] [http://the3125.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/eames-lounge-
chai...](http://the3125.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/eames-lounge-
chair-3001.jpg)

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ktrgardiner
As awesome as that setup is, I can't imagine any college being okay with it.
Holes in the wall? Glue? Custom flooring even. The amount of damage that all
must have caused would give Resident Life an aneurism. Where I go, we have a
$400 housing deposit each year that is only returned to us if we didn't cause
damage to the room. And then we get fines on top of that if we did anything
that would be costly to repair.

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Zimahl
At the state school I went to they didn't even want us using push pins to hold
up posters.

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tdicola
Very nice! I bet the room wasn't as expensive to put together as it looks. You
can find small amounts of left over flooring & other materials on craigslist
for cheap.

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adnam
He didn't want any of the wooden planks showing through, but was happy to have
4" bolts sticking out at head-height.

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smackfu
What was the flooring before? Is there any way to temporarily lay hardwood
over carpet?

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michaelbuckbee
He mentioned that the floor was a "diarrhea brown", which I took to mean
linoleum or an otherwise hard floor.

While there is nothing to stop you from installing a floating hardwood floor
(typical installation is floor > thin foam pad for insulation > click together
flooring) on top of carpet, and in lieu of a foam pad, the end result would
likely be that the floor would feel "mushy" when walked on.

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mattlong
Classic East Campus!

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mitko
people like that always make me feel so humbled

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Game_Ender
It makes me try and mentally tally how many I played video games in college
(and I wasn't even that big of a gamer).

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hammock
Was it hard hooking up with chicks on a loft?

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nicklovescode
This is why I love MIT

