Campus of the University of California, Irvine
The campus of the University of California, Irvine is known for its concentric layout with academic and service buildings arrayed around a central park, and for its Brutalist architecture.
Layout
The campus was designed favoring large open spaces and decentralized, suburban facilities over the dense, urban layout of older campuses. It is primarily composed of 1960s Modernist/Futurist and Postmodern buildings set in a circle around a large central park. Satellite parking lots lie in another circle outside the main circle of buildings, with UCI's streets roughly laid out in a pattern of circles themselves. This layout is attributable to Chancellor Aldrich and fellow university planners, who conceived UCI as concentric circles of knowledge. UCI's master plan called for the central park to serve as the nucleus of the campus, with academic units moving outward based on educational attainment.Aldrich Park is composed of a network of paved and dirt pathways that connect the campus. Much of Aldrich Park serves as a home for large numbers of thickly wooded trees indigenous to the local Mediterranean climate, and as a whole it is landscaped meticulously. Its geographical center hosts a garden and plaque commemorating UCI's founding, which marks the site of an unbuilt carillon tower known as the Centrum. For students, Aldrich Park is a popular meeting place, study area, and convenient field for sports or other activities. Many large-scale outdoor concerts and events are held such as Anteater Involvement Fair and the welcome week concert.
Aldrich Park is completely encircled by a pedestrian walkway known as Ring Road, which is the main pedestrian thoroughfare on campus. Ring Road has a diameter of 256m and a circumference of 1609m, with its lowest point at 23m and highest point at 38m.
Image:Uci-park-pano.jpg|right|thumb|Panoramic view of Aldrich Park
Each School at UCI is located on its own segment of Ring Road. Starting from the main Langson Library and Administration building and going clockwise, Ring Road passes through Social Sciences, Engineering, Physical Sciences, Biological Sciences, and Humanities. These schools also have their own central plaza on Ring Road, which serves as localized meeting areas. These central plazas bisect the schools and lead to smaller plazas, which in turn lead to paths in Aldrich Park. These smaller plazas usually serve as quieter study areas, with one, hosting Infinity Fountain, which has the shape of a Möbius strip. UCI also employs two bridges on Ring Road, which allow for entrances to Aldrich Park; at the foot of the Humanities Bridge is the Jao Family Sculpture Garden, which hosts depictions of notable Chinese philosophers.
Away from the central campus, UCI has a more suburban layout occupied by sprawling residential and educational complexes, some of which are on steep hills. These are linked to the central campus with four pedestrian bridges, which access University Center, the Palo Verde housing complex, the College of Medicine, and School of the Arts. Further expedient travel beyond the bridges becomes impractical without the use of a bicycle, automobile, or public transportation. And despite being heavily built over the past 40 years, a large portion of the outer campus remains undeveloped, with hilly grasslands and brush prevailing. This gives UCI the opportunity to develop for years to come, while many other UC campuses have reached their permanent build-out.
Surroundings
UC Irvine's primary campus is entirely within Irvine, California. The campus is directly bounded by the city of Newport Beach and the community of Newport Coast to the south. The western side of the campus borders the San Joaquin Freshwater Marsh Reserve, through which drains into the Newport Back Bay saltwater estuary. The northern and eastern sides of UCI are adjacent to Irvine proper; the eastern side of the campus is delineated by Bonita Canyon Road, which turns into Culver Drive at its northern terminus and offers links to San Joaquin Hills Toll Road and Interstate 405, respectively. Additionally, UCI's southern boundary is adjacent to the San Joaquin Transportation Corridor.There exists a "North Campus" that houses the Facilities Management Department, the Faculty Research Facility, Central Receiving, Fleet Services, the Air Pollution Health Effects Laboratory, and numerous other functions. It is located next to the UCI Arboretum; both the North Campus and the arboretum are located about from the main campus.
Despite the suburban environment, a variety of wildlife inhabits the university's central park, open fields, and wetlands. The university has bobcats, mountain lions, hawks, golden eagles, great blue herons, peregrine falcons, rabbits, raccoons, owls, skunks, weasels, bats, and coyotes. The small rabbits in particular are very numerous and can be seen across campus in high numbers, especially during hours of low student traffic. The UCI Arboretum hosts a collection of plants from California and Mediterranean climates around the world.
Architecture
The first buildings were designed by a team of architects led by William Pereira and including A. Quincy Jones and William Blurock. The initial landscaping including Aldrich Park was designed by an association of three firms including that of the famous urban-landscaping innovator Robert Herrick Carter. Aldrich Park was designed under the direction of landscape architect Gene Uematsu and was modeled after Frederick Law Olmsted's designs for New York City's Central Park.The campus opened in 1965 with the inner circle and park only half-completed, with nine buildings and a dirt road connecting the main campus to the housing units. Only three of the six "spokes" that radiate from the central park were built, with only two buildings each. Pereira was retained by the university to maintain a continuity of style among the buildings constructed in the inner ring around the park, the last of which was completed in 1972. These buildings were designed in a unique style, combining sweeping curves and geometric shapes with elements of classic California architecture such as red tiled roofs and clay-tiled walkways. They sit atop raised platforms that elevate them above the rolling terrain, surrounded by heavy white railings that suggest the deck of an ocean liner. The unique paneled facades were created to shade the interiors at a time when there were no significant trees on the campus, and a color palette of warm tones was chosen to offset the frequently overcast skies.
Construction on the campus all but ceased after the Administration building, Aldrich Hall, was completed in 1974, and then resumed in the late 1980s, beginning a massive building boom that still continues today. This second building boom continued the futuristic trend, but emphasised a much more colorful, postmodern approach that somewhat contradicted the earthy, organic designs of the early buildings. Architects such as Frank Gehry and Arthur Erickson were brought in to bring the campus more "up to date". This in turn led to a "contextualist" approach beginning in the late 1990s, combining stylistic elements of the first two phases in an attempt to provide an architectural "middle ground" between the two vastly different styles. Gehry's building was recently removed from campus to make way for a new building, with a design that has been called a "big beige box with bands of bricks."
Many of the campus's Futurist buildings were featured prominently in the 1972 film Conquest of the Planet of the Apes.
As of 2005, the campus has more than 200 buildings and encompasses most of the university's 1,500 acres.
Libraries and study centers
| Jack Langson Library | Resources for the Arts, Humanities, Education, Social Sciences, Social Ecology, and Business & Management disciplines |
| Science Library | One of the largest consolidated science and medical library in the nation. Resources for the schools of Biological Sciences, Engineering, Information and Computer Science, Physical Sciences, portions of Social Ecology, and the College of Medicine |
| Grunigen Medical Library | Located at UCI Medical Center, contains 43,000 volumes of material |
| Libraries Gateway Study Center | Located across from the Langson Library |
| UCI Law Library | Located on the lower two floors of the Law Building |
UCI holds 4.3 million volumes, 253,000 journals and serials, and 1.9 million electronic books in its library. The library is noted for having many special collections and archives, including 100,000 government documents. In addition to holding a noted Critical Theory archive and Southeast Asian archive, the UCI Libraries also contain extensive collections in dance and performing arts, regional history, and more. Additionally, Langson Library hosts an extensive East Asian collection with materials in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean languages.
Nearly all departments and schools on campus complement the resources of the UC Irvine Libraries by maintaining their own reading rooms and scholarly meeting rooms. They contain small reference collections and are the choice for more intimate lectures, graduate seminars, and study sessions. There is also the large Gateway Study Center, one of the university's original buildings and under the custody of UC Irvine Libraries. Having served formerly as a cafeteria and student center, it is now a dual-use computer lab and study area which is open nearly 24 hours.
The UCI Student Center offers a large number of study areas, auditoriums, and a food court and therefore is one of the most popular places to study on campus. UC Irvine also has a number of computer labs that serve as study centers. The School of Humanities maintains its Humanities Instructional Resource Center, a drop-in computer lab specializing in language and digital media. Additionally, UCI maintains five other drop-in labs, four instructional computer labs, and a number of reservation-only SmartClassrooms, some of which are open 24 hours. Other popular study areas include Aldrich Park, the Cross-Cultural Center, the Locus, and plazas located in every School.