UC Santa Cruz Master Plan

“THIS CAMPUS MUST BECOME FAMOUS FOR ITS VOIDS RATHER THAN ITS SOLIDS…IT MUST BE MAGNIFICANT IN CONCEPTION, DARING AND FORTHRIGHT IN ITS ARCHITECTURE—BUT GENTLE BE THE HAND IT LAYS UPON THE LAND.”

--T.D. Church, 1962

UC President Clark Kerr and UC Santa Cruz’s first Chancellor Dean McHenry were able to convince the UC Regents to hire a consortium of notable Northern California designers to prepare a master plan for UCSC, to be built on 2,000 acres of ranch land overlooking the Monterey Bay. The UCSC design/planning team included: Landscape Architect Thomas Church who strove to preserve the meadow and move the campus into the trees, as well as architects: John Carl Warnecke, Ernest J. Kump, Theodore Bernardi (of Wurster, Bernardi & Emmons), and Robert Anshen (of Anshen & Allen).