William Pereira

• Name — William Pereira • Birth Name — William Leonard Pereira • Born — April 25, 1909 • Birthplace — Chicago, Illinois, U.S. • Died — November 13, 1985 (aged 76) • Place of death — Los Angeles, California, U.S. • Practice — William L. Pereira & Associates • Significant Buildings — Transamerica Pyramid Geisel Library Chet Holifield Federal Building Disneyland Hotel (California) Los Angeles County Museum of Art • Significant Design — Concrete-shelled buildings of streamlined and expressive shapes

Pereira was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Sarah (Friedberg) and Saul Pereira. His paternal grandfather was of Portuguese Sephardi Jewish ancestry, and his other grandparents were Ashkenazi Jews. Pereira graduated from the School of Architecture, University of Illinois and began his career in his home city. He had some of his earliest architectural experience helping to draft the master plan for the 1933 "A Century of Progress" Chicago World's Fair. With his brother, Hal Pereira, he designed the Esquire Theater at 58 East Oak Street, considered one of Chicago's best examples of Art Deco style.

• Illustration — Geisel Library (1970) at the University of California, San Diego Pereira moved to Los Angeles in 1933, and Hal also relocated there in that decade. After working as a solo architect, Pereira was hired by the Motion Picture Relief Fund and designed the first buildings for the Motion Picture Country House in Woodland Hills, California, which was dedicated September 27, 1942. Pereira also had a brief stint as a Hollywood art director. He shared an Academy Award for Best Special Effects for the action/adventure film Reap the Wild Wind (1942). He was the art director for This Gun for Hire, Alan Ladd's first film. He was production designer of the drama Jane Eyre (1943), and of the war drama Since You Went Away (1944). Pereira was also the producer of the noir crime/drama Johnny Angel (1945), and of the Joan Fontaine drama From This Day Forward (1946). In 1949, Pereira became a professor of architecture at the University of Southern California. He then formed a partnership with fellow architect and classmate, Charles Luckman, in the early 1950s. The firm, Pereira & Luckman, grew into one of the nation's busiest. The duo designed some of Los Angeles's most well-known buildings, including the famed "Theme Building" at Los Angeles International Airport (in collaboration with Paul Williams and Welton Becket). • Illustration — Langson Library at the University of California, Irvine, illustrating Pereira's paneled façade system He parted with Luckman in 1959. Afterward, he formed the third and final company of his career, "William L. Pereira & Associates." In the 1960s and 1970s, he and his team completed over 250 projects, including drawing up the master plans for the Los Angeles International Airport expansion and developing the master plan for the 93000 acre city of Irvine, California, which put his photograph on the cover of the Time magazine issue of September 6, 1963. He later worked with Ian McHarg on the plan for the new town of The Woodlands, Texas. Pereira also designed the campus plans of the University of Southern California, the University of California, Irvine, and Pepperdine University. His firm's designs varied greatly, but had many common design hallmarks, such as strong geometric forms, twinned vertical columns, elevated causeways, and perhaps most distinctly, a liberal use of bespoke lampposts and lighting fixtures, designed to complement their associated structures. Many of his buildings were also complemented by expansive water features. A pioneer in the design of heat-efficient buildings, he often employed concrete façade systems that shaded the windows, which were typically of bronze reflective glass, from direct sunlight. According to Pereira's daughter, Monica, one of his favorite buildings of his own was the complex he designed for the Municipal Water District in Los Angeles in 1963. In 1967, Pereira founded Aero Commuter, a Los Angeles area commuter airline that eventually became Golden West Airlines. Pereira's son was one of the founders of Air California.

He had two wives, former model and actress Margaret McConnell (1910–2011, married June 24, 1934) and Bronya Galef; the latter marriage ending with his death. He has a son, William Pereira Jr., and a daughter, Monica Pereira, a Spanish teacher. In contrast to his famous modernist design sensibilities, Bill Pereira once practiced out of a small collection of rustic offices on the site of what was then known as the ‘Buffalo Ranch,’ part of the much larger Irvine Ranch, two miles from where the UCI campus stands today, in Corona Del Mar/Newport Beach. He chose to live in the Emerald Bay community in north Laguna Beach, and in later life he considered Laguna as his home town. William Pereira died of cancer at age 76 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. At his request, no funeral services were planned.