The Southern California chapter of the Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS) stopped by for a visit, and invited us along to join an architectural tour around the campus. (Thank you!)
Alan Hess, architect and historian, led a walking tour of the campus, describing William Pereira’s architectural work and influence on the UCI campus.
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- Floating over Aldrich Park with Allan Hess.
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- Allan Hess describes Pereira’s style at Schneiderman Hall.
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- Modernist Maverick, the exhibit on the architecture of William Pereira at the Nevada Museum of Art.
3 things we learned from Alan Hess:
- Pereira was a modernist architect, noted for his futuristic designs. He also loved science fiction. That explains why UCI works so well as the set of this 1972 film on ape slave labor in the 1990’s.
- Pereira initially planned to have the UCI campus and Irvine community integrated seamlessly — but the unsolved mystery of 1970 changed everything.
- Pereira was a man of exquisite style and taste, and was chaffeured around in a Bentley. We really wish we had a photo of this.
William L. Pereira and Associates Project Workbooks for the University of California, Irvine Campus documents the preliminary planning of the campus, and shows the evolution of concepts for the campus layout. Here’s a peek at something we found in the collection:
Early model of the UCI campus from the William L. Pereira and Associates Project Workbooks for the University of California, Irvine Campus (AS-127)
