<p>It is unfortunate that colleges built after 1930’s lack the charm of a traditional college campus. The quadrangle or courtyard defined by the various school halls and the turn of the century frat houses once housed professors. The landscape selection carefully orchestrated by landscape architects helps define the beginning and ending of a season. Classic architecture is soften by wall climbing ivy devoid of trend, stood proudly and weathered beautifully and a true testament of time honored tradition. </p>
<p>The 4 years of campus living in a traditional setting created unique lifestyle that forever etched in the memory of its proud graduates. Students who graduated from schools described by this setting often return to the school to visit and encourage their kids, relatives and friends to attend the same school. The emotional ties are much stronger than students graduated from the newer schools. As many of the graduates reaching their retirement years a number of these traditional campuses are now creating an age and wealth qualified campus residences for the alumni. These senior residents have all school and amenity privileges like the students such as theatre, school plays, sport venue, library research, dining hall, and even sitting in the lectures to learn. </p>
<p>The newer schools lack the loyalty of their graduates due the weak student lifestyle identity while attending the school. Having a strong university village composed of successful restaurants, bars, retails, and cultural specialty stores. Book stores, and bike store is important in adding a lifestyle component to the campus identity. UCI lacks all of the tradition but it is centrally located in the wealthiest and a very desirable location. </p>
<p>During the 1980’s the regent hired the best architectural firms to design every buildings. The structures represented the best of the 80’s and 90’s but the architects were full of ego so every building is a sculpture that does not relate to one another. As a result, the fabric of the campus is intertwined with chaos and nothing really matches. I like the buildings and I hate the campus. Campus buildings should be calm and peaceful acting as the backdrop for students’ interaction. UCI structures are cold, sterile and uninviting. The scale of the circular site plan is too big and quite predictable. While older campuses have quads, courtyards and promenades that are punctuated with hierarchy and element of surprising spaces. Very few architects today have the skill to create campus building that feel warm and inviting. </p>
<p>Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA, USC, The Claremont Colleges, Cal Tech and Occidental College were designed with strong axis and hierarchy of active and passive outdoor spaces. Outdoor spaces that students gather and enjoy. Most outdoor spaces have a good element of feng shui and they are defensible spaces. The planning priciple of the Law of the West Indies applied to most of these campuses. Most building relates to a similar theme and materials. Landscape for most are specimen trees that work well and integrated with the building composition. Composition of site planning were rectilinear and buildings relate to one another by rectangular outdoor spaces and layered with trees for shades and human scale.</p>
<p>Mostly importantly in addition to studying hard there is life on campus. Many of their students are very proud to call their campus “home”.</p>
<p>I apologize for derailing this thread.</p>