Radical New American Campus

Now rising on open, rolling land in the middle of an enormous ranch 35 miles south of Los Angeles are the first buildings of the elaborately - planned campus of the University of California at Irvine.

The new university site was dedicated by President Johnson last year.

Not only will Irvine be an educational institution—a branch of California's far-flung multiversity —but also it will be one of the largest, most carefully interrelated and planned educational communities ever created.

The huge complex includes not only the campus out the adjoining town and surrounding residential, recreational and industrial developments. It is this total community concept that distinguishes the Irvine campus development from any other.

The Irvine Ranch is the biggest private development project in the world—93,000 acres of open land, sprawling over mountains and desert to the sea. This vast estate was created in the mid-1870s by James Irvine, a San Francisco merchant. Kept intact by his heirs, the land has until now been used only for field-crop farming and citrus-growing.

Because the ranch is privately owned, the master plan can be carried out without the usual hindrance of obtaining the approval of innumerable small landowners and local officials.

One thousand acres were donated to the university for its campus site by the Irvine Company, present-day owners of the ranch. The university has since purchased an additional 510 acres to provide needed space for various teaching, research and housing facilities for students and faculty as the campus expands. A university-oriented town, to be developed by the company, will be located north of the campus.

The architect has planned the campus for the University of California at Irvine in the form of a giant wheel, with six main quadrangles radiating out from a central park. This landscaped park, including a large expanse of lawn, a lake, an amphitheatre, and a soaring campanile, is intended to be the focus of university life.

The principal quadrangle, to the north, will be the core of the campus, containing such general facilities as the library, administration building, student union, auditorium and museum. From its great plaza a pedestrian mall, flanked by shops, will lead to the town square of the new community of Irvine.

The other quadrangles will be grouped around the park, and joined by "the ring," a circular path that crosses the gullies of the site on viaducts. The basic undergraduate buildings will be closest to the ring, and extending out behind them towards the perimeter of the campus proper will come the related graduate schools and research facilities, housing car park and athletic fields.

By reserving certain areas for courts and plazas, around which future buildings can be placed, it will be possible for each quadrangle to grow and expand without encroaching upon established open spaces.

From the central campus, defined by a loop road, the arms of the outer campus protrude irregularly into the surrounding communities. Between these projections will be three "inclusion areas"—small, university-related communities.

"The line between town and [academic] gown will be all but invisible," the architect says. University concert halls, art galleries and other educational and cultural resources will be at the disposal of the neighbouring communities, and the university's growth will be integrated with the cultural, industrial and recreational life around it.

The concentric scheme allows development to proceed outward from a strong centre, providing the university right from the beginning with a distinctive "sense of place." As the university grows, the hub will remain as the heart of the entire campus.

Initial construction includes building for the College of Arts, Letters and Science, the School of Engineering and the Graduate School of Administration. The university will open its doors in September, 1965, with an estimated enrolment of 1500 students. By 1990 facilities are planned to expand to accommodate an expected enrolment of 27,500 students in a major graduate and undergraduate university, equal in size to the University of California's campuses at Los Angeles and Berkeley.