UC Irvine’s planning intended to foster community

Shawbong Fok

It has often been said that you meet your lifelong friends in

college. Ideally, the college would have a community atmosphere that

fosters student bonding.

But some students at UC Irvine say that it lacks a community

atmosphere.

“It is hard to meet people,” undergraduate Grace Kim said.

Two college guides, Kaplan and the Princeton Review, echo Kim’s

sentiment, explaining that UC Irvine, which opened in 1965, is

largely a commuter school without the commercial appeal of a

championship Division I football team that often unites and enlivens

a campus.

UC Irvine’s layout, as envisioned by the campus architect William

Pereira in the early 1960s, was intended to foster a sense of

community. It would encourage lively debate and exchange of diverse

opinions -- essential in a world-class education. It would encourage

academic disciplines, traditionally enclosed, to open up and

collaborate, emboldening the interdisciplinary ethos set forth by UC

Irvine’s founders.

Pereira planned UC Irvine’s central core as an oasis of grass and

trees, serving as the nucleus from which radial alignments of

academic quads would originate, creating a clock outline. There would

be six quads on the rim of the circular oasis: the humanities; the

social sciences; the life sciences; the physical sciences;

engineering and computer science; and the library and commons.

Pathways would run from the grassy oasis onto surrounding academic

quads. A pathway would encircle the grass and trees, outlining the

campus’ grassy nucleus with pavement.

In short, movement would occur in a circular, more fluid fashion.

Irvine would become the only campus in the University of

California system to have a concentric framework, a testament to

Pereira’s his visionary style.

Today, such plans do foster a sense of community, some students

say, adding that many people do meet one another on the central core

of grass and trees in between class.

Others disagree, saying that the layout does not create a

community. They say students are so divided that the architecture

cannot do anything to help.

Yet the central premise of UC Irvine’s philosophy during its

developmental stages in the 1960s was to break down social and

academic compartments -- divisions that would stifle creative

thinking. Faculty and students would need to trade ideas within and

across academic disciplines if progressive thinking was to be

encouraged.

As such, tradition was shunned to some extent. Unlike northeastern

universities that were bounded by tradition, the newly born UC

Irvine, near the shores of a boundless Pacific Ocean, had a sense of

freshness and exploration that made progressive ideas easier to

accept.

This progressive thinking was reflected in Pereira’s concentric

design. The strategically placed academic quads, lining the rim of

the oasis, would encourage lively debates within and between

disciplines.

The progressive architectural plans in the 1960s reflected the

ambitious vision of the University of California system, the

Princeton Review college guide says. So UC Irvine had to live up to

its University of California name, anchored by the crown jewel of UC

Berkeley, many administrators thought. It was striving to become a

world-class institution -- a place where the best and the brightest

taught and learned.

Today, UC Irvine has caught up. It’s ranked 27th out of all

doctoral granting institutions in the United States, according to the

National Research Council. It’s one of four world-class universities

in the greater Los Angeles area -- the others are UCLA, USC, and Cal

Tech. Its alumni include many Pulitzer Prize winners, and two Nobel

Prizes have been awarded to faculty members.

UC Irvine’s world-class reputation is underscored by its

interdisciplinary ethos, the Princeton Review says. It is an ethos

that is symbolized by its daring architecture conceived in the 1960s.

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