Academic prowess.

One of the last designs on which James Stirling worked with Michael Wilford shows mastery of place-making and urban design which humanises an otherwise anonymous campus and offers divers internal experiences.

Stirling and Wilford's new Science Library at the University of California at Irvine is a powerful urban gester in one of the most 'placeless' environments in North America. The UC Irvine campus is a mess, a fitting testament to the bankruptcy of post-1960s planning. (It is not without irony that Orange County, in which Irvine is the most conspicuous example of that county's 'lifestyle', has just gone bankrupt financially.) The campus is like a business park, a hodge podge of stand-alone object buildings scattered across a confusing landscape of meandering footpaths, wiggling roads, and shapeless parking lots.

Seen from the air, the UC Irvine campus has a vague logic, just as the rest of Irvine, with its collector roads and segregated zoning does when seen from above at 38 000 feet. The campus is arranged around a circular pedestrian Ring Mall with a series of spokes leading in from the outside. It is when you arrive by car or (in that rare state in California) on foot that it becomes completely confusing. The circular Ring Mall is only apparent on the maps that everyone seems to need to find their way around and, since the road system is totally unrelated to the pedestrian realm, any sense of orientation to the circle is lost.

Stirling and Wilford's Library is organised around an axis on one of the proposed spokes leading to the Ring Mall. Whereas most other buildings on campus appear to be objects responding only to programme or a functional diagram, the Science Library stretches its footprint as far as possible to create figurative urban spaces and to suggest a pattern for future buildings arranged around a new Biosciences Quadrangle.

The new Science Library represents a clear and radically different approach to campus planning. It recalls a Classical tradition of place-making and, in this sense, connects with the almost forgotten California prototypes of pre-1945 campus planning, as seen in the plans for the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and the original plans for UC Berkeley and UCLA. Those campuses in their original form were organised around axes, sequential figurative spaces and had an overall collective identity in terms of style, materials, building height and an attitude toward climate.

The plan of the Science LIbrary is symmetrical about its axis, consisting of a sequence of spaces starting with a portal facing the mall, leading into a circular courtyard and on toward the future quadrangle. The architects have suggested the location of future Bioscience buildings that will complete the quadrangle and reinforce the line of the axis through to the centre of the campus.

The design, like so many of Stirling's buildings, incorporates ideas previously explored in earlier projects. It is part of an evolution of urban planning ideas that began with the unbuilt Derby Civic Centre project (1972) with Leon Krier and evolved through the trio of German museums - Dusseldorf, Cologne, and Stuttgart. The circular courtyard, with its change of level, curved ramps, and blocked vista, was first used in the unbuilt designs for the Dusseldorf Museum. The integration of the circular courtyard plan form with a triangular plan form at the upper levels was previously explored in the as-yet-unbuilt designs for No One Poultry in London. The zigzag fenestration that denotes the main reading rooms was first seen on the unsuccessful competition entry for the National Gallery in London.

The Science Library also demonstrates the evolution of Stirling's approach to architectural design, especially when compared with his other university library, the 1965 design for the History Faculty in Cambridge. Whereas the Cambridge design represents a strong adherence to the idea of form following function, in this case, the desire to maintain unobstructed supervision of reading room and stacks from a single control desk, thereby creating a classic 'object in space' solution, the Irvine Library is quite the opposite - a 'space making object' that suppresses 'function' to one of many considerations in the design process. Unlike Cambridge, the Irvine Library does not possess a single great reading room. In fact, the Library is a series of collections, interspersed with different types of reading and study areas.

The ground floor houses the main entrances to the Library and to an Education Resource Center, both of which face the central courtyard. The second floor contains a double-height Reference and Periodicals reading room that encircles the lower part of the courtyard. The fourth, fifth and sixth floors contain several reader and stack areas arranged at right angles to a triangular court, superimposed above the circular courtyard below. The wings that outline the end of the quadrangle also contain stacks and reading areas, while the two small wings facing the mall contain study rooms and individual carrels.

The plan is logical and coherent in that you are always aware of your location with reference to the courtyard and the main vertical circulation. It also has variety and surprise within the simple geometric forms. The shifting on and off the main axis is handled with great skill at the ground level. The axial route through the courtyard is denied by the change in plane and by one of the circular columns that defines the triangular void above. So you are forced to choose one of two routes via the curving ramps up to the courtyard. This makes the visitor, as well as the passer by, change direction and even pause, thereby signifying an important decision-making place. Once in the courtyard, the two entrances, one to the Library, the other to the Resource Center, become apparent. If the axial route had not been deflected, the significance of their location would not have been noticed so readily. Just as there is a column on axis with the entrance from the mall, so there are columns in front of the two entrances, repeating the denial of the axes and helping to superimpose the triangle within the circle.

Once inside the Library entrance, the visitor is directed toward the main stairs and lifts by the free-form reception desk and check-in counter. The resolution of the difficult design problem of how to bring the visitor back onto the main axis of the building is resolved in two ways. The lifts are double-sided so that, while you enter at the ground level from one side, you exit from the cabs on the opposite side to bring you back in line with the main axis of the building overlooking the circular courtyard. The main stair to the second level is designed in a dynamic Z-shaped form in such a way as to shift you back on axis. (A straight flight stair would have been too obvious and would not have been as dramatic a move.)

The double-height reading room on the first floor is a beautiful space, filled with light and shade. The stacks are arranged around the perimeter and the reading areas look down on the courtyard below. The 24 circular columns adjacent to the glazed window wall are painted in the colours of the rainbow, so helping to identify your position as well as animating the room with reflected sunlight. Whereas the interior of the courtyard is fully glazed, the outer walls have tiny square windows just below ceiling level that allow small shafts of light into the room.

The upper three floors have a different kind of natural lighting since, on these floors, the book stacks are arranged against the sides of the triangular courtyard. In this case, natural light is diffused by the use of translucent 'Kal wall' on the three flat sides of the triangle. Only the curved corner portions of the inscribed circle are of clear glass, opposite where the reading areas are located. These floors also have reading carrels and outdoor reading terraces around the perimeter to provide a variety of study spaces. In addition, there are other stacks, reading rooms, and private study rooms in the wings overlooking the quadrangle. Whereas the Cambridge Library was organised about the idea of control and supervision of all activities from a single point, somewhat like a panopticon, the Irvine Library permits a variety of study places and activities, and keeps supervision to a minimum with the use of eletcronic controls at the check-in desk.

The building's exterior form acknowledges the internal functions as well as attempting to emulate a California building type. The red sandstone string course above the third floor and the change in colour of the external rendering acknowledge the change in content between the general reading floors and the reference library. Similarly, the window sizes tell a story about the rooms within - large zigzag fenestration denoting reading areas, tiny square windows denoting stack areas, and rectangular windows for offices. The stucco rendering is a result of tight budget limitations, as well as the realities of construction in such a benign climate as Southern California. The material used is called 'Sto', an external insulated finish system (EIFS) that is increasingly used in California because of its low cost and flexibility. The rendering is painted in two shades of salmon pink: the lower portion in a darker shade with a hand-made pattern superimposed. The large surfaces are subdivided into panels with score lines for expansion joints. A red sandstone base anchors the building to the ground.

The most unusual feature on the elevations is the metal mansard roof, a witty play on that most ubiquitous American form one sees adorning practically everything from McDonalds fast-food restaurants to tilt-up factories and cheap motels. The metal mansard acts as a cornice, cupping the large blank facades against the sky, as well as masking the mechanical equipment which, for budget reasons, was left exposed on the roof. The clip-on nature of the detailing, together with the fact that, up close, you can see between the roof and the sky helps this read as a screen and saves it from being kitsch.

The severity of the elevations and their powerful clarity in terms of defining urban spaces is both shocking and refreshing, especially when compared with the mindless decoration on so many other campus buildings. The Library is most striking when seen in strong sunlight, but is also quite mysterious when seen in the shadowless light from the fog banks that often envelop the Southern California coast in the summer.

Equally severe, almost to the point of austerity, is the landscaping. The quadrangle is a bare, gravel surface devoid of any paving, scaling elements or planning, except for a row of trees against the building. Similarly, the circular courtyard is unembellished with only the most schematic of a paving pattern in the stone floor and the minimal outline of a bench. Compared with the designs for Stirling and Wilford's museum at Aachen, done at the same time, it appears undeveloped and barren. Possibly, budget limitations were to blame, but the courtyard leaves a lasting impression of the design.

When seen from afar, the proportions of the opening from the quadrangle to the courtyard appear squat and a bit mean, and out of scale with the significance of the axis it is announcing. Similarly, the two end elevations that face the Ring Mall appear to be too small to define the sweep of the mall itself.(*) If there had been more programme in the building, it would have made a stronger urban statement if the Library could have helped define the edge of the Ring Mall as well as the cross axis. One unfortunate and irritatingly inept feature of this intersection is that a decorative pattern on the pedestrian path that is intended to make the crossing of the axis and the Ring Mall circumference is about three feet out of alignment with the new Library. How did this happen? Was the Library realigned, or was the paving pattern incorrectly installed after the Library was complete? It only became apparent when the site fences were removed.(**)

The new Science Library is a significant work in the Stirling and Wilford portfolio, one of Stirling's last, and an indicator that, in Michael Wilford's capable hands, the firm is able to produce strong, clearly-articulated buildings that have lessons to give on place-making and urban design.

* The master plan only allows a very small opening to the east. Editor

** In fact, the building was moved off axis by the university because of the proximity of a dreary single-storey building to the north.