Hippies, craftsmen, and sociologists: "Learning by Doing at the Farm" examines radical education in 1960s southern California

2014-03-14T11:07:00-04:00

It’s easy to forget that Irvine, the minutely planned southern California city awash in tract housing and shopping complexes, was regarded as a pretty radical place at the time of its 1971 incorporation. Almost entirely ranchland up until the mid-1900s, the area that would become Irvine jump-started its urban development as the egg-white to the University of California’s yolk. Looking for land to accommodate expanding enrollment, the UC bought a large chunk of dusty land owned by the Irvine Company to establish a new campus, adding surrounding territory for residential and commercial development. The school isn’t named after the city -- both are named after the Irvine Company. City and campus were master-planned by architect William Pereira, and the University opened in 1965, still largely unfinished but marked by Pereira’s concrete brutalism and Olmsted’s New York Central Park plan.

In the era of this extremely young urban territory, beginning in 1968, UC Irvine began an experiment...

Archinect - News

Hippies, craftsmen, and sociologists: "Learning by Doing at the Farm" examines radical education in 1960s southern California