New Age by Design: Bureaucratic Utopias and the Planning of UC Irvine, 1947-1965

New Age by Design reveals the twenty-year masterplanning history of the University of California at Irvine, built on a Southern Californian ranch in the early 1960s. Dreamed of as an educational experiment by bureaucrats and designed by the modernist architect William Pereira, this carefully orchestrated vision blends the aspirations of cybernetic science, political ambition, and the promise of an ever-new frontier to conquer. At the dawn of the turbulent cultural era later dubbed the “Age of Aquarius,” the campus was set to revolutionize the way students would live and learn. Conceived from the ground up, the planned landscape of the “University City” encapsulated a technocratic alternative to California’s growing countercultural spirit.

• Insight into the turbulent founding phase of UC Irvine
• Archival material from the dawn of counterculture and computer age
• Exploration of the colonial history and land politics