Charles Warner Oakley

Campus Architect, UCLA

Westwood

Specialty: Campus buildings

Since his appointment in 1986, Charles Warner Oakley has been at the helm of the UC system’s most ambitious building program, costing $1.5 billion over the past 12 years.

Through it all from infrastructure improvements to the Ackerman Union addition to the new Anderson Graduate School of Management Oakley has maintained a clear vision.

“What drives it all is that it’s a place for people. It’s not a place for buildings to yell at each other and call attention to themselves,” said Oakley, 53, who goes by the name “Duke.”

That vision is dramatically different from that of the post-war building boom at UCLA, when architects rebelled against traditional notions of order and symmetry. New buildings sprouted everywhere, fragmented and without focus.

Today, order and cohesion are back in favor. “Each element needs to relate to its immediate surroundings, and imply the greater,” Oakley said. “And there needs to be a hierarchy of places and spaces. They can’t all be the same. If it’s homogenized, you don’t know where you are.”

As an example, Oakley points to the new wing at the law school library, now nearing completion. Architects decided to put a tower on the library addition, as a way of creating a visual tie to the landmark towers of Royce Hall. “It strengthens the perception of the organization of the campus,” Oakley notes, even though it may “hit you subconsciously.”

The Anderson Graduate School of Management, with its urban village feel and soothing courtyard, links the lower to the upper campus, while the Ackerman Student Union creates an appealing and useable public square out of Bruin Plaza.

Oakley says he enjoys watching the constant stir of activity in the new classrooms, courtyards and libraries. It brings him, he says, “a real, visceral pleasure.”