Cultivating Learning among the Gardens: William Pereira’s Plans for Structure, Scholarship, and Nature in California

Abstract:

William Pereira, chief designer of the University of California at Irvine, sought an elevated landscape within which academic buildings and garden preserves would coexist. This paper places such designs for the pastoral campus of UC Irvine within the context of Post WWII development in Southern California. Using Leo Marx’s ‘Machine in the Garden’ as well as Ebenezer Howard’s ‘Garden Cities,’ Pereira’s work is evaluated for its ability to blend nature and artifice. In addition, Irvine is considered relative to other American new towns of the 1960s, including The Woodlands and Columbia. Planning texts and diagrams, in addition to archival photographs, are considered in the evaluation of UC Irvine’s design and construction. Situating the campus as both town and garden, the analysis focuses on whether Pereira’s modernist intentions to create a new space where both campus and nature could evolve together, were fully met. As a semi-natural, intensely social space, UC Irvine’s development is laid out as a construction project, while serving the cultural and aesthetic needs of this mid-twentieth century academic community.

Keywords: Nature, Pereira, Landscape Design, California, Irvine

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