Irvine - University of California, Irvine

[geomorph]

Irvine is a California city in Orange County, a distant suburb of Los Angeles. It has a population of 250,000 and on the edge of its developed area sits the campus of the University of California, Irvine. The campus opened in 1965; in the large circular core, surrounding a greenspace, are most of the original academic buildings from the 1960's that compose an impressive textbook example of the era. Later additions from subsequent decades are grouped fairly evenly around the outer ring of the core. The campus mascot is the anteater and is depicted in several places!



































































































































































































































All photos taken by geomorph in 2016.

[Quixote]

Great set!

Yep, that's definitely Irvine... very sterile looking. But what I will say about UCI is that it ranks pretty high for an institution that's only a little over 50 years old. US News now has it at #39 (#9 for public schools), up from I think #42 or so not too long ago.

[eschaton]

Great pictures and interesting architecture (considering the era, which isn't my favorite). I find it odd how few people are in the shots however. Were you purposefully trying to avoid taking shots with people in the background, or is campus normally that dead?

[mhays]

Some of that looks good. Other parts look like a dystopian sci-fi movie from the 1970s.

[xzmattzx]

Nice pictures. The campus has a nice core of modernist buildings. It kind of fits in for California.

[jg6544]

Odd. Apparently there are no people at this university.

[202_Cyclist]

Excellent photos-- thank you for posting. I took two summer courses at UCI nearly twenty years ago. Since that time, UC Irvine as added a law school (I don't know if this was included in your photos).

Originally Posted by mhays

Some of that looks good. Other parts look like a dystopian sci-fi movie from the 1970s.

Actually, "Conquest of the Planet of the Apes," was filmed at UC Irvine in 1972.

https://ucisca.wordpress.com/2011/01...t-uci-in-1972/

[ozone]

Nice shots of a throughly modern campus. The plan for the campus is pretty interesting. It was done by the same guy who designed the LAX Theme building, the original Disneyland Hotel and the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco. In fact you can see some architectural relationship with the Transamerica Pyramid in the Krieger Hall.

[ozone]

Originally Posted by jg6544

Odd. Apparently there are no people at this university.

You mean you've never seen architectural photography devoid of people before? It's pretty common and easily done at university during break and Sunday mornings. But if you look again you'll see people in several of the shots.

[giallo]

I love the architecture. The beige brutalism against the blue sky does it for me.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by ozone

You mean you've never seen architectural photography devoid of people before? It's pretty common and easily done at university during break and Sunday mornings. But if you look again you'll see people in several of the shots.

I've seen it of course, but I don't think it's the norm anymore. Even architecture firms like to stick fake people in their renderings now to give them a sense of life.

Like virtually everyone on this thread I am sure, I have been a college student. There were of course less people on my campus on the weekend, but I never saw it looking like this around the campus center or dorms.

[202_Cyclist]

Originally Posted by eschaton

I've seen it of course, but I don't think it's the norm anymore. Even architecture firms like to stick fake people in their renderings now to give them a sense of life.

Like virtually everyone on this thread I am sure, I have been a college student. There were of course less people on my campus on the weekend, but I never saw it looking like this around the campus center or dorms.

UC Irvine, excellent school that it is, is also largely a commuter school, so this would explain some of the lack of people. Additionally, it is, well, Irvine, so that also explains some of the reason the campus appears so sterile.

[LAsam]

Though I'm generally not a fan of the architecture from that time period, it's an interesting case study nonetheless. I guess being from the Midwest, I'm more accustomed to older campuses and the historic charm and grandeur they carry. This campus aesthetic is rather cold for my tastes.

[geomorph]

eschaton, I believe I photographed this campus on two weekend days and indeed it was rather empty!

[sopas ej]

Originally Posted by 202_Cyclist

Excellent photos-- thank you for posting. I took two summer courses at UCI nearly twenty years ago. Since that time, UC Irvine as added a law school (I don't know if this was included in your photos).



Actually, "Conquest of the Planet of the Apes," was filmed at UC Irvine in 1972.

https://ucisca.wordpress.com/2011/01...t-uci-in-1972/

Indeed:
http://www.dourish.com/img/apes/apes13.jpg

I always thought that the original campus buildings looked like giant cheese graters.

UC Irvine, like the city of Irvine itself, suffers by being designed in that 1960s suburban car-oriented era; the campus and the city it's in, cannot be turned into something more urban, short of knocking everything down and starting over. As has already been mentioned, UCI is mainly a commuter campus, and of course those commuters commute by private car.

A number of my friends attended school there. When I was in high school back in the 1980s, it was said pejoratively that UCI stood for the "University of Chinese Immigrants." In the 1990s, going with the Asian theme, I heard it referred to as the "University of Civics and Integras."

Yes, Irvine is very sterile; everything looks like it was built yesterday. When I first visited Irvine to meet up with a friend, I actually got lost because everything looks the same, and there are really no defining landmarks there, at least there weren't 25 years ago or so. I was last there a few years ago, and though now more built up, it still is very sterile and ghost-town like because you don't see people walking; and even though everything is immaculately landscaped, it's still unpleasant walking in Irvine because there's nothing to walk to, and you're walking along major thoroughfares that are like very wide highways with very high speed limits.

[geomorph]

sopas ej, I love your cheese grater comment and it is certainly apt looking through all my images in the first part of the thread!