Original Design
—“Robert Royston's Thoughts on Landscape Architecture,” Landscape Australia magazine, 1986.
Photograph of the Upper Quarry Amphitheater by UCSC Photography Services, 1972.In 1966, the University commissioned the landscape architecture firm of Robert Royston to transform the ragged industrial landscape of the quarry into an outdoor theater. Royston, who received a degree in Landscape Architecture from UC Berkeley in 1940, worked for Church early in his career. He specialized in designing outdoor community spaces, and he created several innovative suburban parks, such as Mitchell Park in Palo Alto and Central Park in Santa Clara. Royston's design for the Amphitheater combined campus planners' efforts toward environmental stewardship with his own unique design philosophy.
Throughout his career, Royston contemplated the way landscape architecture affects people psychologically and socially. Royston thought that outdoor space should offer respite from everyday life and invoke the restorative power of nature. He designed spaces with the goal of bringing communities together in their experience of the natural world. For Royston, the symmetrical structures and highly ornamental features of traditional landscape architecture were too rigid and artificial to allow for this kind of experience.
Cowell College Courtyard, designed by Theodore Bernardi in the Bay Region Style circa 1965. Photograph 2017.Like many of his other designs, Royston's design for the Amphitheater is biomorphic—that is, he designed the structure of the space around the existing features of the terrain, rather than imposing a foreign geometry upon the space. His design also draws on elements of the architectural style known as the Bay Region Style or Bay Area Tradition. This style softened the hard lines characteristic of other mid-century styles by integrating natural and local materials—primarily, redwood—into the design. Many of the buildings on campus, such as Cowell College, were designed in the Bay Region Style.
Royston's design immerses visitors in marble and redwood. Interactive images of Royston's Master Plan (top) and Preliminary Planting Plan (bottom) appear below. Navigate through the markers on each image to learn more about the details of the design. The Media Gallery features more architectural drawings and photographs that document the life of the Amphitheater.
Physical copies of these designs reside with PP&C, as well as in the Robert N. Royston Collection held by the Environmental Design Archives at UC Berkeley.
Design note: Royston emphasized collaborative design. His colleagues—Asa Hanamoto, H. Eldon Beck, and Kaz Abey—participated in designing the Amphitheater. Project manager Harry Tsugawa, a landscape architect at UCSC, was also involved in the design process.
Style note: Royston did not conceive of his work as conforming to the "design vocabulary" of any particular style of architectural design. For more about Royston's design philosophy and its relationship to major architectural styles, see:
Rainey, Rueben M. and JC Miller, Modern Public Gardens: Robert Royston and the Suburban Park, San Francisco: Stout Books, 2006.
"Robert Royston's Thoughts on Landscape Architecture," Landscape Australia, Vol. 8:2 (Winter 1986), pp. 152–164.
For more on the First, Second, and Third Bay Region Style, see:
Brown, Mary. San Francisco Modern Architecture and Landscape Design 1935-1970: Historic Context Statement. San Francisco: San Francisco City and County Planning Department. Web. Accessed 20 August 2017.