University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley (also known as Cal, UC Berkeley, The University of California, or simply Berkeley) is a public coeducational university situated east of the San Francisco Bay in Berkeley, California, overlooking the Golden Gate. The oldest and flagship campus of the University of California System, Berkeley is a leading research university. Its graduate programs and faculty are consistently ranked among the best in the world.

Campus architecture and architects

The campus is 1,232 acres (5 km²) in its entirety, though the main campus is on the western 178 acres (0.7 km²). Despite its urban setting, the campus manages to maintain a surprisingly park-like atmosphere, crossed by two creeks and including the tallest stand of hardwood trees in North America. Overlooking the main campus on the east side are several research units, most notably the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Space Sciences Laboratory, the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, and the Lawrence Hall of Science. Much of the rugged upper hill territory is still undeveloped. Residential Halls and administrative buildings spill out into the city of Berkeley, particularly to the south of the campus.

Related Topics:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory - Space Sciences Laboratory - Mathematical Sciences Research Institute - Lawrence Hall of Science

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The campus and its surrounding community are home to a number of notable buildings by early 20th century campus architect John Galen Howard, his peer Bernard Maybeck (best known for the Palace of Fine Arts), and Maybeck's student, Julia Morgan. Later buildings were designed by prominent architects such as Charles Willard Moore (Haas School of Business) and Joseph Esherick (Wurster Hall).

Related Topics:
John Galen Howard - Bernard Maybeck - Palace of Fine Arts - Julia Morgan - Charles Willard Moore - Haas School of Business - Joseph Esherick

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Very little of the early University of California (c. 1868–1903) remains, with the Victorian Second Empire style South Hall (1873) and Piedmont Avenue (designed by Frederick Law Olmsted) being notable exceptions. What is considered the historic campus today was the eventual result of the 1898 "International Competition for the Phoebe Hearst Architectural Plan for the University of California," funded by the mother of William Randolph Hearst and initially held in the Belgian city of Antwerp (eleven finalists were judged again in San Francisco, 1899). This unprecedented competition came about from one-upmanship between the prominent Hearst and Stanford families of the Bay Area. In response to the founding of Stanford University, the Hearst Family decided to "adopt" the fledgling University of California and develop their own world-class institution. Although a Frenchman, Emile Bénard, won the competition, he disliked the "uncultured" San Francisco atmosphere and refused to revise and oversee the plan. He was replaced by the fourth place winner John Galen Howard, who would later become UC Berkeley's resident campus architect. Only University House, designed by architect Albert Pissis and then home to the President of the University of California, was placed according to the Bénard plan (it is today the home of UC Berkeley's Chancellor).

Related Topics:
Piedmont Avenue - Frederick Law Olmsted - Phoebe Hearst - William Randolph Hearst - Belgian - Antwerp - Hearst - Stanford - Stanford University - Emile Bénard - University House - Albert Pissis

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Much of the older campus is built in the stately Beaux-Arts Classical style, which was regarded as the most cultured, beautiful, and "scientific" style by the cultural establishment at the time of the competition, and thus was the style preferred by John Galen Howard and Phoebe Hearst (who paid his salary). With the support of University President Benjamin Ide Wheeler, Howard designed over twenty buildings, which set the tone for campus up until it post-World War II expansion in the 1950s and 60s. These included the Hearst Greek Theatre, the Hearst Memorial Mining Building, Doe Memorial Library, California Hall, Wheeler Hall, (Old) Le Conte Hall, Gilman Hall, Haviland Hall, Wellman Hall, Sather Gate, and the 307-foot Sather Tower (nicknamed "the Campanile" after St. Mark's Campanile in Venice). Buildings he regarded as temporary, non-academic, or not particularly "serious" were designed in shingle or Collegiate Gothic styles, such as North Gate Hall, Dwinelle Annex, and Stephens Hall.

Related Topics:
Beaux-Arts - Benjamin Ide Wheeler - Hearst Greek Theatre - Hearst Memorial Mining Building - Doe Memorial Library - Sather Gate - Sather Tower - St. Mark's Campanile - Collegiate Gothic

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This collection of buildings (Founders' Rock, University House, Faculty Club and Glade, Hearst Greek Theatre, Hearst Memorial Mining Building, Doe Library, Sather Tower and Esplanade, Sather Gate and Bridge, Hearst Gymnasium, California, Durant, Wellman, Hilgard, Giannini, Wheeler, North Gate and South Halls), collectively are a California Historical Landmark and are listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Bowles Hall?built in 1928?is California's oldest state-owned dormitory and is also listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Related Topics:
California Historical Landmark - National Register of Historic Places - Bowles Hall

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John Galen Howard retired in 1924, his support base gone with both Phoebe Hearst's death and President Wheeler's resignation in 1919. William Randolph Hearst, seeking to memorialize his mother, contributed to Howard's resignation by commissioning Bernard Maybeck and Julia Morgan to design a series of dramatic buildings on the southern part of the campus. These were originally to include a huge domed auditorium, a museum, an art school, and a women's gymnasium, all arranged on an eastward esplanade and classically oriented towards the campanile. However, only the Hearst Women's Gymnasium was completed before the Great Depression, at which point Hearst decided to focus on his estate at San Simeon instead.

Related Topics:
William Randolph Hearst - Bernard Maybeck - Julia Morgan - Great Depression - Estate - San Simeon

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The dramatic increase in enrollment during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s led to the rapid expansion of the campus, beginning with the University's appropriation of the north end of Telegraph Avenue to form Sproul Plaza and headed on its east side by Sproul Hall, a new neoclassical building for the campus administration. However, the administration moved out of Sproul and into California Hall, situated in the heart of campus, after students barricaded themselves in Sproul during the 1964 Free Speech Movement. (Today, Sproul Hall houses Student Services and the Admissions Office, and Sproul Plaza is the center of student activities.) A series of huge Brutalist concrete buildings were also built to provide much-needed housing, lab, office, and classroom space, including Evans Hall, Cory Hall, Wurster Hall, Davis Hall, McCone Hall, Zellerbach Hall, the undergraduate dorms Units 1, 2, and 3, and others.

Related Topics:
Telegraph Avenue - Sproul Plaza - Free Speech Movement - Brutalist

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Gray-green Evans Hall is the tallest instructional building on the campus and houses the offices of faculty in mathematics, statistics, and economics, which once included former Assistant Professor of Mathematics Ted Kaczynski, infamously known as the Unabomber. Students widely revile Evans as the ugliest building on campus, with the possible exception of Wurster Hall. (Ironically, Wurster Hall is the building that houses UC Berkeley's architecture department.) The most recent campus development plan lists Evans Hall as a candidate for demolition within the next fifteen years. Cory Hall, the electrical engineering building, was the site of two attacks by the Unabomber in 1982 and 1985. Its neighbor Soda Hall (computer science), is one of the few classroom buildings on campus with showers. It was completed in August 1994, at the cost of $35.5 million, raised entirely from private gifts. Dwinelle Hall is another large building on campus; its rooms are strangely numbered both because Dwinelle Hall was built on a slope, with entrances on different levels, and because Dwinelle Hall's expansions in 1996 and 2000 are numbered differently from the original building. Because this confusing building is host to both large lower-division lecture classes and many smaller discussion classes, it is sometimes called the "freshman maze."

Related Topics:
Mathematics - Statistics - Economics - Ted Kaczynski - Cory Hall - Electrical engineering - Computer science - 1994

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Underneath UC Berkeley's oldest buildings is a system of steam tunnels which carry steam to those buildings for heat and power. During the 1960s, Berkeley students chained the doorknobs of the Chancellor's office in protest over the Chancellor's policy regarding the Vietnam War. The Chancellor, having no other way in or out of the building, used the steam tunnels to escape. Afterwards, the exterior double doors on that building were changed so they only had one doorknob, and this remains today.

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Recent developments include the newly completed Jean Hargrove Music Library, only the fourth free-standing music library to be constructed in the United States. Current major construction projects include the first free-standing buildings to be devoted to East Asian Studies in the United States, the C.V. Starr East Asian Library and the Chang-Lin Tien Center for East Asian Studies, designed by noted architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien; the former has broken ground and is scheduled for completion in Fall 2007. The headquarters building for CITRIS (Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society) broke ground in 2004 and is expected to be completed in 2007; it will include nanofabrication facilities, labs, and classrooms. Finally, the massive 285,000 square foot Stanley Biosciences and Bioengineering Facility will be completed in mid-2006; oriented towards health-related interdisciplinary research, three-quarters of the building is devoted to labs and specialized facilities while one-quarter will be office and instructional facilities.

Related Topics:
Chang-Lin Tien - Tod Williams and Billie Tsien - Nanofabrication - Stanley Biosciences and Bioengineering Facility

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