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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