Perloff Hall: The Epicenter of Architecture and Urban Design at UCLA
UCLA's Architecture and Urban Design program thrives within the walls of Perloff Hall, situated on the university's vibrant main campus. Surrounded by the broader UCLA Arts community and a stone's throw from iconic landmarks like Royce Hall, Perloff Hall serves as a hub for architectural innovation and education.
A Legacy of Vision: Honoring Harvey S. Perloff
Perloff Hall bears the name of Harvey S. Perloff, a distinguished figure who led the UCLA Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning from 1968 to 1983. His commitment to the field continues to inspire the students and faculty who learn and work within the building's walls.
Prime Location: Nestled in the Heart of UCLA's Arts District
Located on the northern edge of the UCLA campus, Perloff Hall is in good company. It stands alongside other prominent buildings within the UCLA School of Arts and Architecture, including the Broad Art Center, Royce Hall, and the Fowler Museum, as well as the Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden. This concentration of artistic and cultural resources creates a stimulating environment for students and faculty alike.
Spaces for Innovation: Inside Perloff Hall
Perloff Hall is more than just a building; it's a dynamic ecosystem designed to foster creativity and collaboration. It primarily hosts graduate architecture classes and encompasses a variety of spaces tailored to the needs of architecture students:
- Studio Spaces: Dedicated studio spaces provide graduate and undergraduate students with secure, private workspaces, complete with individual desks and storage. These spaces are essential for students to develop their design concepts and bring them to life. M.A. and Ph.D students have their own dedicated study area in the building.
- Seminar Rooms and Classrooms: These spaces facilitate interactive learning and discussions, fostering a deeper understanding of architectural principles and theories.
- Lecture Hall: A large lecture hall provides a venue for presentations by leading architects, scholars, and critics, exposing students to diverse perspectives and cutting-edge research.
- Exhibition Gallery: The exhibition gallery showcases student work, faculty projects, and visiting exhibitions, providing a platform for sharing ideas and engaging with the broader architectural community.
- Faculty and Administrative Offices: These offices provide support and guidance to students, ensuring a smooth and enriching academic experience.
Pushing Boundaries: Cutting-Edge Technology and Resources
UCLA Architecture and Urban Design is committed to providing its students with access to the latest technologies and resources. Perloff Hall features several specialized labs and facilities that empower students to explore new frontiers in architecture and design:
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- Robotics-Enabled Workspace: This flexible and evolving resource supports a wide range of creative and experimental work. The space fosters adaptability and creative exploration for both students and faculty. It is equipped with a diverse selection of 3D printers, including FDM printers, plaster printers, and resin printers, nurturing creativity and promoting critical thinking among students.
- Immersive Media Studio: The Immersive Media Studio is a hybrid platform for spatial experimentation, media performance, and digital prototyping. Outfitted with motion capture suits, depth-sensing systems (Kinect, RealSense, LIDAR), DSLR cameras, projectors, and a range of head-mounted displays (HTC Vive, Oculus, Meta2), the studio enables experimentation across scales and disciplines. The studio supports a broad spectrum of uses-from immersive filmmaking and behavioral simulation to compositing, performative installations, and digitally augmented fabrication. Its modular design allows it to evolve alongside student needs and emerging practices.
- Fabrication Shop: The Fabrication Shop at Perloff Hall offers a wide range of traditional tools, as well as large-scale CNC (computer numerically controlled) routers, laser cutters, 3D printers and large-scale vacuum formers. The Fabrication Shop is open 24/7, specialized tools can be used under the guidance of the Shop Manager and student assistants through 10pm.
- Print Lab: The Print Lab is open around the clock, giving students uninterrupted access to professional-grade output equipment. High-resolution, large-format plotters, laser printers, and advanced computing stations support workflows from technical documentation to experimental graphic production.
- High-Performance Computing: Every lab workstation in Perloff Hall is powered by industry-standard NVIDIA GPUs, 32GB of RAM, and 1TB of local storage-providing the computational power needed for rendering, simulation, real-time visualization, and machine learning.
- Connectivity: Perloff Hall provides campus-wide wireless and wired access, underpinned by a robust 10Gb backbone that ensures high-speed performance for all studio and lab activities.
The Intellectual Heart: Decafé
Named by former dean of UCLA’s Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning (now UCLA AUD), Professor Emeritus Richard Weinstein (1932-2018), the Decafé is the intellectual heart of UCLA AUD's Perloff Hall.
Expertise in Emerging Technologies
UCLA Architecture and Urban Design has longstanding expertise in emerging technologies and continues to set the standard for integration into the overall academic curriculum. Leading architectural technologists take time out from their practices to teach students in Technology Seminars and studios that focus directly on applying emerging technologies to contemporary problems. These courses explore a wide range of design and computational issues, with a particular focus on the manufacturing process, environmental and sustainable design, and new techniques of visualization.
Resources for Research: Libraries and Collections
UCLA provides architecture students with access to a wealth of library resources, both within Perloff Hall and across the campus:
- UCLA Arts Library: Located in the Public Policy Building adjacent to Perloff Hall, the UCLA Arts Library offers an interdisciplinary research collection in the areas of architecture and the history of architecture as well as art, art history, design, film and television, photography as a fine art, studio art, and theater, and is composed of more than 254,000 volumes. Holdings in architecture include approximately 51,000 books wholly or partially devoted to the field, 650 current serial subscriptions (including some 300 periodicals), extensive backfiles of periodicals with indexes, and a collection of theses from UCLA Architecture and Urban Design students. The library receives the most important American, European, Japanese, and Australian architecture titles, and also gets many leading periodicals covering graphic, industrial, and furniture design.
- Young Research Library: The Young Research Library is also located in North campus close to Perloff Hall. Their Department of Special Collections actively collects drawings and papers of architects and landscape architects. Among the architects represented are Richard Neutra, A. Quincy Jones, S. Charles Lee, and William Pereira.
- Digital Resources: In addition to hard-copy resources, UCLA offers an abundant choice of digital resources for architecture students. ORION2, the University Library’s online information system, provides access to books, archives, audiovisuals, computer files, dissertations, government documents, and maps in all UCLA libraries. The California Digital Library’s (CDL) Melvyl Catalog provides computerized access to similar multimedia resources in the libraries of the nine UC campuses, the California State Library, the California Academy of Sciences, the California Historical Society, and the Center for Research Libraries.
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