University of California, Irvine
William L. Pereira 1962-ca. 1977
William
Pereira, UC Irvine’s first architect, chose the Brutalist style for the
original eight buildings on the UCI campus. Brutalism derives its name from the
French term béton brut, which literally means “raw concrete”; its premise was
to stretch the technical limits of “brute” materials. Pereira’s buildings
consist of large concrete boxes in three-dimensional castconcrete panels which
float in a sea of open space and rise starkly from the landscape. He took
advantage of mid-20th-century technical advances in the use of reinforced and
pre-cast concrete, thus creating a consistent appearance across all of the
early structures on campus. Throughout the 1970s Brutalist-inspired buildings
were erected at UCI by other architects as well.
