Cultivating learning among the gardens of Irvine: William Pereira’s plans for structure, scholarship, and nature in suburban California

ABSTRACT This paper places William Pereira’s designs for the campus of UC Irvine within the context of Post-World War II 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 through his integration of landscape and architecture. Irvine is considered relative to existing planning ideologies of this era, including the development of suburban corporate campuses and auto-dominant suburbs. New developments and emerging growth enclaves reflected a desire to retain a sense of pastoralism, while accommodating the conveniences associated with modern living. The context of Marx and Howard, along with case studies of the mid-twentieth century help to frame the analysis of UCI’s landscape and architecture. Planning texts, diagrams, and 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 needs of this mid-twentieth century academic community.