William L. Pereira and Associates

In the late 1950s, Architect William Pereira was hired by the University of California (UC) Regents to help identify a suitable site in the Southeast Los Angeles-Orange County area for the next UC campus.

The site chosen was the 93,000 acre Irvine Ranch, 1,000 acres of which were dedicated to the new campus. Pereira was hired to be the master architect of both the UC Irvine (UCI) campus and the City of Irvine. With input from UCI Chancellor Daniel Aldrich and UC President Clark Kerr, Pereira conceived of the campus as two concentric rings around which buildings would stand, with a park at the center. This circular design would allow student residence halls to be near the academic buildings and keep the time to walk from building to building under ten minutes. Buildings were grouped together by function and academic discipline. The library, administration, and student union were situated on the north side of campus, adjacent to the humanities and fine arts. The science buildings were placed on the south side. Pereira presented his campus plan to the UC Regents at two meetings in October and December 1962, where it passed with only one dissenting vote. William L. Pereira was born on April 25, 1909 in Chicago, Illinois. He earned a degree in architecture from the University of Illinois in 1930, after which he was hired by the Chicago firm Holabird & Root. Pereira left the firm in 1932 to practice privately. At the Chicago 1933 exposition, he won 22 out of 25 industrial-design competitions. Pereira moved to Los Angeles in 1938 and was hired to design a new studio for Paramount Pictures. He also taught in the architecture department at the University of Southern California and designed the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Los Angeles International Airport, the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco, several buildings on the UC Santa Barbara campus, the UC San Diego library, and CBS Television City, among others. He died on November 13, 1985 in Los Angeles.

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