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Improv scenario: You're a trillionare and you buy Caltech. You offer so much money that Caltech wants to be bought. You plan to improve Caltech. If you want a job done right, do it yourself, and you need dictatorial power. You are King of Caltech.
Caltech needs a bar and restaurant on campus that's always open and is run by students. Add an underground clone of Brawn Gym and include lounges with billiards, ping pong, bowling, a rink, saunas, jacuzzis, etc. Put it under the Red Door Cafe outdoor seating.
There should be almost no parking above ground. Build cut-and-cover parking wherever convenient. Caltech has room for around 3000 spots below ground, assuming one level.
Area that's not a building and also inconventient for underground parking can be underground labs and lecture halls. Dig deep. There's a particle accelerator under the pond.
If parking is abundant, parking structures can be converted to housing.
Make buildings luxurious to help with recruiting. Make them all-window with balconies. Have lots of large apartments and offer fellowships in the form of large apartments. Grad zones need more recreation rooms.
Caltech needs a stadium at the southernmost athletic field. Install bleachers with luxurious seats and with more than 30 rows. Stadium capacity is 500 people times row count. Make the bleachers mobile and telescoping to accomodate football, rugby, soccer, and baseball. Use the stadium for large events and harness Caltech's vast parking. Rent it for high school football. Texas has high school stadiums with 20000 seats. Pasadena high schools have a typical capacity of 3000 and bleachers are immobile, unposh, and set far back from the field.
Don't try to build a football team because competition for football recruits is stiff, and because football takes much practice time.
Recruit rugby players and build a strong men's and women's team. Favor rugby in recruiting and offer the debaucherous rugby lifestyle. Berkeley has the most rugby college national championships. Lots of small colleges have strong rugby teams. A strong rugby team can happen anywhere. Hype games to the city. Also build strong teams for soccer and field hockey.
Rugby is an intenational game and football isn't. Caltech grad students are mostly international and undergrads are mostly American. The Caltech Rugby Team tends to have more grads than undergrads, and grads on the team tend to be internationals with prior rugby experience.
Caltech needs an underground rink and hockey teams. Caltech likes broomball. Design a sport and call it "Bumper kart ice drift broom polo". Dare MIT to play a game.
Have mat rooms for wrestling and gymnastics.
Convert some concrete walkways to running track and build a racing circuit that tours the campus. Have go-kart races and go-kart engineering contests. Formula-C.
Turn some walkways into artificial turf, such as the central walkway in in Beckman Mall.
Caltech could have race cars and a race class. Have a badass car repair shop and a badass mechanic. Hire The Fonz. The mechanic can soup up the cars of students and he can teach students how to make karts. Los Angeles is a car town. Nobody walks in LA.
Tennis courts can have adjustable nets to accomodate tennis and pickleball, along with pickleball lines. There can be walls on the end courts that block sound, and they should be sturdy for quietness. Put hedges between courts and buildings.
Caltech has 3 tennis courts at the Athenaeum and 8 courts at the athletic zone. Caltech has one of the best values among colleges for students per court but it's not enough. The courts are full at prime time and no one can play during team time. Court lights turn off at 10 PM. Courts need light switches accessible by Caltech ID.
The parking lots next to the courts can be cut-and-cover parking with 8 new courts on top. The southernmost parking lot has room for 5 courts if aligned east-west and 10 courts if aligned north-south. Put a tent over the southernmost courts.
The Athenaeum has room for another tennis court. Caltech could have 30 courts. Rent unused courts. Some courts can be parking during peak hours.
Recruit tennis players and make Caltech a tennis power.
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Make Caltech luxurious to help with recruiting. Add benches, tables, umbrellas, hedges, and trees.
Have golf greens, bunkers, ponds, streams, and driving nets.
Caltech has loud air systems. Soundproof them.
Have a fleet of vehicles to rent, including trucks and posh buses. Rent buses to schools when they're not in use. Have a vast stockpile of camping gear. Every evening, a bus could go to a cool place and bring people back at the end of the night. Have students vote on destinations.
Have an airport for aircraft with vertical takeoff and landing, with underground aircraft parking. Think like an aircraft carrier.
Caltech needs big supercomputers, which are all-around useful. Spend as much money on supercomputers as on telescopes.
Have a film studio with LED walls, floor, and ceiling. Have equipment for filming and audiovisual engineering. Make Caltech propaganda.
Have massive EV charging capacity, powered by LNG and gasoline in an underground stockpile. California can't be counted on for power or gasoline. Make Caltech energy independent.
Caltech doesn't have a nuclear reactor. Shame! MIT has the 2nd largest college reactor at 6 Megawatts.
Caltech needs a synchrotron, which is all-around useful. Make the diameter as large as Caltech and larger if possible. Caltech can make an underground ring accelerator with a diameter of 500 meters.
Add underground space for student storage. Make it deep with tall shelves. Every student that doesn't live on campus should have a large locker on campus.
Expand the student machine shop and have construction equipment available for Ditch Day.
Make buildings soundproof.
Put lawns on roofs and ditch solar cells. Solar cells belong in deserts.
Build a tall hill at the southwest end of Tournament Park and extend the park a bit westward into the area occupied by the parking lot. The hilltop can see into the stadium and can accomodate mobile bleachers. Put a roof over the tennis courts and then mobile bleachers can park there and see into the stadium. Connect the bleachers to the hill.
Put a building with underground parking under the hill.
Have exotic boulders around campus and have some of them in a big pile. Make a zone with obstacles that's fit for nerf gun fights and X-games.
Caltech Hall should be all offices. Scan books and put them underground.
Build a wall around Caltech.
Caltech should have a grocery store on campus and an outdoor kitchen at the Red Door Cafe. Have grills.
Brawn Gym can extend westward to add 4 racquetball courts. The strip of land just north of the track can host 10 racquetball courts if aligned east-west. There's room for 8 rows of bleachers on top.
Braun can be extended by digging under the track or the main athletic field. This space can have things like squash and racquetball courts, mat rooms, and lockers. At U. Chicago, the racquetball courts under the stadium housed the first nuclear fission reactor.
Have bleachers that are small, portable, and telescoping. They can make a tennis stadium or help with graduation.
Have equipment for sports like football, hockey, skiing, scuba, cricket, etc.
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Caltech needs a pond large enough for waterfowl.
The turtle pond can be extended eastward. Put cute bridges over the pond. Feed birds and befriend them and support a large population. Give birds GPS tags and have an app that shows where each bird is so that people can find their favorite birds. Put cameras on the pond that broadcast to the cloud.
Give the pond varying depths. Shallow for waterfowl and deeper sections for humans. Have a deep end with a diving board. Import pretty sand for the beach and pond bottom. Have boats and scuba gear to check out. Put fish and coral in the pond. Have dolphins. Ally with the Scripps Institute of Oceanography.
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Caltech needs lots of bird feeders and artificial nests. Attract large birds like condors and eagles.
Caltech can be a zoo. If you wall the Caltech border with hedges, you can have wild mammals in the interior. Give them GPS tags. Dogs, cats, pandas, etc. Let there be Caltech community animals and make Caltech a safe space for people to unleash their pets. Make Caltech a pet playground and have a nexus zone for pets. Have grills at the nexus zone where humans and animals dine together.
Have streams and ponds all over campus.
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Have snacks for humans and animals.
Seize interior streets and make them something else. Vehicles can get from Hill Avenue to the utilities parking lot via the Admissions Office parking lot. Even better, build a tunnel. Have an underground parking lot under utilities for trucks.
Seize exterior streets and replace them with tunnels, which helps with noise and elevates the value of buildings on the border.
New undergrad housing can enable every undergrad to live on campus in a single. Undergrads need 400 more spots.
Only half of grads live on campus and they need 600 more spots. Postdocs need 400 more spots. Many faculty might like to live on campus. Have posh faculty apartments. Grad housing zones need more recreation rooms.
People People Space per person
on campus meter2/person
UG Bechtel 211 12.5 Mostly undergrad with some grads and postdocs
UG Avery 135 Mostly undergrad with some grads and postdocs
UG Venerable 88
UG Page 86 12.5
UG Lloyd 80
UG Fleming 80
UG Rickets 68
UG Dabney 64
UG Blacker 64
UG Marks 32
UG Braun 32
Grad Catalinas 468 30
Grad San Pasqual St 192
Grad Wilson Avenue 32 Del Mar
Athenaeum 28
Total undergrad 940 987
Total grad 692 1410
Total postdoc ? 600 Some postdocs live in grad houses
Total faculty ~6 300 Some faculty live in undergrad houses
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Caltech has 2000 parking spots and it's not enough. Caltech is 50 hectares and 10 are convenient for underground parking, with a capacity of 3000 underground spots if we assume one level.
The population of grads, postdocs, and faculty is 2300, and staff is around 1000 people. If we assume they all have a car on campus, and if half of undergrads have a car on campus, it's 3800 cars. 1 level of underground parking can park 3000 cars, so at least 2 levels are needed. If Caltech wants to be cool it should have 3 levels. Surplus parking space can be labs or storage.
Places for underground development include:
Area Suggested above-ground use
hectares
Tennis courts, south .5 Tennis
Tennis courts, Athenaeum .3 Tennis Includes the lawn to the west
Parking lot, north .7 Offices Includes Michigan Avenue
Parking lot, southernmost .7 Tennis, indoor
Parking lot, next to tennis .5 Tennis Tennis courts & the adjacent parking lots
Parking lot, Athenaeum .3 Hotel & lawn Buildings along the south and east. Northwest zone is grass to add to the Athenaeum lawn
Parking lot, northeast .2 Housing
Parking lot, Student Serve .2 Lawn
Parking lot, Utilities .2 Lawn
Parking lot, Venerable .1 Lawn
Lawn, track zone 2.0 Lawn & stadium
Lawn, main athletic field 1.9 Lawn
Lawn, southwest .9 Lawn West of Mudd, Kerckkoff, and Braun
Lawn, west of Beckman .7 Lawn & offices Put a building on the west side of the lawn and keep the east side lawn
Lawn, Beckman Mall .5 Lawn South of Beckman Auditorium
Lawn, west of Steele Labs .5 Lawn
Lawn, west of Caltech Hall .4 Lawn
Lawn, Olive Walk .4 Lawn
Lawn, Athenaeum .3 Lawn
Lawn, Tournament Park .3 Lawn
Lawn, north of Red Door .3 Lawn Underground gym & lounges
Lawn, east of Braun Gym .2 Gym extension The strip of lawn between the pools and the main athletic field
Lawn, N. Community Garden .2 Housing
Lawn, San Pasqual east .1 Housing
Parking structure SW .3 Housing
Parking structure NW .3 Housing
Parking structure East .3 Housing
Street, Wilson Ave 1.5 Offices
Street, Holliston Ave .5 Lawn
Street, San Pasqual west .2 Recreation rooms
Street, San Pascual east .2 Housing
Total 15.4
Half of the main athletic field already has underground parking, so the capacity for new underground parking is 2700 spots, assuming one level.
There are 3 parking structures with around 400 spots each. If a structure is converted to housing, it can have a sub-basement with 100 spots, so only 300 spots are lost.
There are 6 above-ground parking lots with around 60 spots each.
If a parking lot is converted to housing, make the sub-basement parking.
Interior lawns could have labs or lounges underneath.
Make buildings flexible to be either housing or offices. Include balconies.
The table has proposed apartment sizes. Width is more at a premium than length, so splurge on length. Have small apartments for those that want to live cheap and large apartments for those that want to live large. Have lots of large apartments to help with recruiting and offer scholarships in the form of large apartments.
Width Length
feet feet
Undergrad, small 8 12 Or a small office
Undergrad, large 10 16 Or a large office or a hotel room
Grad 10 24
Postdoc 12 24 Or a hotel presidential suite
Faculty 20 30
Family 24 30
Family, large 32 30
Families can have lots of room if they're on the the first floor and have a basement.
Put underground parking under the tennis courts and under the nearby parking lots. Turn above-ground parking into tennis courts, which can be parking during peak hours.
Convert parking structures to housing.
Have mobile telescoping bleachers on the south athletic field.
Build a gym and lounges under the Red Door Cafe.
Turn interior streets into lawn and underground parking.
Add racquetball and squash courts to the west of Braun Gym.
Extend the pond eastward.
Turn interior streets into lawns with underground parking.
Feed birds.
The grass inside the Caltech track is wide enough for a football field, while rugby and soccer require putting artificial turf over the track. There's plenty of room for large telescoping bleachers. Beachers can extend over the pool and over the southernmost parking lot.
The track area is large enough for a baseball stadium, which requires covering the entire track with artificial turf. Have a portable baseball diamond that you can pour dirt on. Arrange the baseball field so that the right fieldline is north-south and the left fieldline is east-west. This way the left fieldline is longer.
Width Length
meters meters
Field hockey 55 91.4
Football 48.76 109.73
Soccer 68 105
Rugby 70 100
Stadium with 30 rows 115 145 Rugby configuration
Baseball 110 110 The typical home run distance is 90 to 130 meters
Caltech track inner grass 64 104
Caltech track outer size 78 178
Olympic track inner grass 73.0 84.39
Olympic track outer size 92.52 176.92
The main athletic field is 130 meters east-west and 144 meters north-south.
Big grass fields on the border are senseless. A building can be built on the border, leaving some grass in the interior. The building can be close to the street, with dense hedges between the building and the street, with a reasonable amount of space between the building and the hedges. The south border along Dabney House is an example. Hedges block sound.
Caltech has many small houses on the northeast and southwest corners that could become tall buildings. Caltech has big room to grow. Caltech can also burrow underground.
Steele House could be a tall office building.
The parking lots just to the north and south of Braun House could be courtyards.
Caltech needs satellite colleges. A minor league farm system.
The stadium can have upper decks that are suspended and mobile.
A stadium is useful for high school state tournament games.
Elite schools obsess about their rowing teams. Every Ivy school has access to water and Caltech doesn't. Too bad.
Underground housing can work if rooms are supersized, and if you have fancy lighting, plants, and pets. Have fake windows made of LEDs. Imagine having a large apartment under the Olive Walk and it's pimped out like a Bond Villain's lair. Have a pool table, ping pong table, fire place, jacuzzi, bar, etc.
Have luxurious underground lounges. First moves
Caltech has one of the best values among colleges for students per court.
Courts Courts Students Students Ivy
total indoor per court
Caltech 11 0 2397 218
Madison West HS 8 0 2228 278
Claremont 22 0 8500 386 Pomona, Scripps, Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd, Pitzer, Claremont Graduate U, Keck Graduate Inst.
Brown 27 5 10737 398 *
Stanford 27 0 17529 464
Yale 29 8 14806 511 *
Pepperdine 19 0 10030 528
Princeton 14 4 8478 606 *
Dartmouth 10 4 6749 675 *
MIT 16 4 11858 741
Penn 15 3 23374 1558 *
Cornell 15 3 26284 1752 *
Brigham Young U 18 4 34390 1911
Harvard 11 6 21613 1960 *
Irvine 16 0 36505 2282
Berkeley 12 0 45307 3776
UCLA 18 0 48048 2670
Pasadena C.C. 6 0 25319 4220 Pasadena City College
Wisconsin 29 12 160782 5544
Columbia 6 6 36649 6110 * The courts are 5 miles from campus
New York U 0 0 51848 Infinity
Polytechnic HS 0 0 877 Infinity One block west of Caltech
Grant Park has 2 tennis courts and is 2 blocks north of Caltech.
Stadiums at nearby high schools have undeluxe bleachers.
Pasadena City College hosts football games for Pasadena HS, Blair HS, and Marshall HS.
Stadium rows Tennis Pickleball Handball Conference
Caltech 0 11 SCIAC
Cal State LA 17 6 PacWest
Pasadena City College 10 6
La Canada HS 15 6 Rio Hondo
San Marino HS 15 5 Rio Hondo
Temple City HS 15 4 Rio Hondo
Monrovia HS 11 8 Rio Hondo
South Pasadena HS 8 4 Rio Hondo
Blair HS 1 6 Rio Hondo
San Gabriel HS 12 9 Almont
Duarte HS 10 6 Montview
Rosemead HS 10 6
Alhambra HS 3 0 Almont
Marshall HS 1 6 Mission Valley
Pasadena HS 0 10 Pacific
Polytechnic HS 0 0 Prep
Villa Park 5 0
Robinson Park 3 0
Arcadia Park - 10 8
Lacy Park - 6
Grant Park - 2
McDonald Park - 0 2
Core requirements
Caltech MIT Juilliard Manhattan School of Music
Caltech MIT U. Chicago CUNY Harvard Juilliard MSM
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Chemistry * *
Multivariable Calculus * *
Mechanics (with Calculus) * *
Electromag (with Calculus) * *
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Differential equations *
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Data from Wikipedia unless otherwise specified.