Tour One: Henry Samueli School of Engineering

Overview

The Henry Samueli School of Engineering is one of the most acclaimed engineering schools on the west coast. Originally included in Pereira’s original conceptions for the University of Irvine, UCI’s School of Engineering includes many notable buildings ranging from older modernist buildings such as the Engineering Tower to newly built and eco-friendly designed structures such as Engineering Hall. Some buildings stand out, with aspects such as the upside down pyramid atop Engineering Hall. Others, seem to cut into the ground and the square motif within the architecture, preferring to utilize circular patterns, such as the McDonnell-Douglas Auditorium. The menagerie of styles given by many different architects over the span of 50 years seem to coexist within a few acres on the UCI campus, and our goal was to see the meaning behind each and every design. This page will span notable buildings in the department from each era of 20th century architecture, from newest to oldest.

The Engineering Gateway Building

The Context – When UCI was first opened in 1965, the Engineering department was one of the first established. Although, the many specialized engineering departments we have now did not exist. Early professors Scott Samuelson and Paul Arthur who taught generalized Engineering courses happened to be create one of the first labs on campus, the UCI Combustion Labratory. Their research was in the application of gas-turbine-propulsion, a major component to aerospace engineering. These two professors later went on to found the Mechanical Engineering cirriculum. Through the 1970s and 1980s, more professors came to research fluid dynamics and other important components to the modern aerospace industry, and the two departments grew together. By 1990 a student could acquire a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering or Aerospace Engineering, and the amount of research being done demanded more and more laboratory facilities.

The Bridge – The Engineering Gateway Building was done by the architecture firm Zimmer Gunsul Frasca in 1994. It is currently home to the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Departments. The ZGF Architects LLP creates architecture that contextualizes the history of the buildings and relevance to the school, so they put a bridge between two lab facilities within the building, to show the symbiotic nature these two schools have had over the years. The building is made up of experimental laboratories, as well, to accommodate the needs of campus researchers burgeoning in the fields of Mechanical, Aerospace, and now civil and environmental engineering as well.

The Engineering Hall

The Overview – One of the newer buildings on campus, the Engineering Hall, built in 2009 is unique both functionally and visually. Harboring a yellow upside down pyramid atop its glass encased stairway, the Engineering Hall catches the eyes of people from both inside and out. Interestingly enough, only one corner of the building sports a glass encasement, perforated with enough space to allow natural air conditioning. This building hosts a variety of studies, such as the the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Edwards Life sciences Center for Advanced Cardiovascular Technology, the Department of Biomedical Engineering, the Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems, as well as a auditorium and lecturing facility.

This building is also Platinum LEET Certified, noted for it’s high performance to energy ratio.

Engineering Tower

The History – Engineering Tower and the original computer science building were both originally conceived in their early design stages by William Pereira, the original campus architect. The two buildings can be seen dating back as early as Pereira’s 1965 drawings of the campus. It wasn’t until 1970 and 1971, however, that the two buildings would be finally completed. Their final design was sketched out by Pereira himself, and was finalized by an architecture firm named Kistner, Wright and Wright.

The Building – Engineering Tower is a 10 story structure housing most of the original engineering classes. A strange curiosity of the building is that the original design alternates each floor with gender specific restrooms, at a ratio of 2 men’s floors between each women’s floor. This relic of a bygone age where women weren’t expected to study STEM majors in as high a quantity as males has now since been remedied with the floors alternating between men’s and women’s restrooms.

Computer Science

The Overview – Computer science is the smaller of the two buildings, and it features something that Periera’s other buildings don’t: an open courtyard. The center of the computer science building is left open, making the building, in essence, a square ring of classrooms.

The two buildings went through many concepts in the design phase, some of which included Pereira’s vision for what he might construct further out in the ring where Engineering Hall and the Engineering Gateway now stand.

Below are some of the original concept drawings from the 1960s for the School of Engineering.

 

 

9 thoughts on “Tour One: Henry Samueli School of Engineering

  1. I really enjoyed the tour of the entire engineering department. An emphasis on a specific building would’ve been nice, but asides from that I thought it was a very descriptive and well planned out tour. I was very interested with seeing the drawings of the original concepts they had in mind.

  2. It was really cool learning about this school because my major is mechanical engineering so it was great to learn about my future school. The drawings you showed us looked really cool and I honestly think the buildings in the drawings would have looked better.

  3. I also greatly enjoyed the tour. My favorite building by far was the Gehry building, although going inside would have been nice so i could have experienced the entire building. Although the tour didn’t cover any particular building in great detail, I liked that because it allowed for you to show us more buildings and i was able to experience the entire school of Engineering.

  4. I enjoyed the tour throughout the school of engineering mainly since I had never really been within the school. I always passed by but this tour offered me a general view of the school. The tour was informative but it would have been more effective if it had been more specialized on a certain part of the school of engineering rather than the entire school.

  5. I enjoyed touring the Engineering side of campus and liked that we got the chance to learn about various buildings. I only wish that we had gotten the chance to visit the inside of buildings. I took the liberty of further exploring the Engineering Tower and found the 3-D printers to be most intriguing. Top highlight of the tour was climbing to the top floor of the engineering hall and viewing the triangular prism rooftop. Top highlight of the webpage are the original drawings provided at the bottom.

  6. The engineering gateway bridge connecting the aerospace and mechanical departments is one of the best ways of illustrating how architecture is expressed in buildings, towers, parks… That being said, although the chip-like bridge looks like a contemporary reflection of modern technology (in my opinion of course), is this type of architecture language suggesting that in the moment and future, many fields of profession have a “fusion/ merged-like” component to it. For instance bio is not distant from technology e.g. Biotechnology.

  7. The Samueli School of Engineering is probably one of the most powerful architectural statements on campus, with Engineering Tower being the tallest building on campus, Engineering Tower and ICS created with the likeness of the brutalist style that the original Pereira buildings exclaim so loudly among the later buildings. Also, the middle-phase buildings, like Engineering Gateway and the laboratories in the back side of the school and the newer phase construction like Engineering Hall and DBH makes the Engineering School unique in that multiple phases of construction are evident.

  8. Getting to know about the school of engineering was very cool, but why did you guys choose the school of engineering?

  9. Having a tour throughout the whole school of engineering was nice but will have been nice if we got the chance to see the building from the inside and also would been nice to know a little more about the buildings but overall was good tour in a little time. I really enjoyed seeing the original concept drawings from the 1960s for the School of Engineering.

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