Two banks, aluminum-clad, rise like mountain ranges at the edge of the UC Davis campus. The near bank ends at a concrete tower six stories high, and from a lookout on the fifth floor you can see the Davis tree line stretching to the horizon.
The UC Davis Social Sciences and Humanities Building, more commonly called the Death Star, is the building everyone on campus knows best — and least. Even Larry Vanderhoef, who served as UC Davis chancellor the year the building opened in 1994, admitted to getting lost.
It takes some getting used to, but once you get to know your part of the building you learn to appreciate it,
– Vanderhoef told UC Davis Magazine in 2007.
Every morning, students on bikes and scooters and on foot rush by on their way to classes across campus. Few of them can avoid the Death Star during their time at UC Davis. It’s home to the College of Letters and Science Dean’s Office and a number of classrooms and academic departments.
“It's almost willfully weird,” said Simon Sadler, an architectural historian and professor of design in the College of Letters and Science. “It’s this giant citadel guarding the east side of the campus entrance from downtown and it's trying to create a landmark.”
The Death Star also has a unique history. It was designed by Antoine Predock, a prominent American architect known for works that shared as much in common with art as with construction. It was also campus’ first true attempt at architecture beyond function alone. As the College of Letters and Science celebrates its 75th anniversary, the Death Star has just completed building updates that will see it well into the future.
Architecture for a growing UC Davis
The plans to construct the Social Science and Humanities Building came after a period of rapid expansion across the University of California. Between 1960 and 1970, enrollment across all UC campuses would more than double.
Emil Mrak, UC Davis chancellor from 1951 to 1969, wrote to the UC regents that he didn’t need architecture. He needed space, and fast.
Mrak said later on, recalling those times, “I said, ‘Give me a cheap building. We don't need all of these fancy things. Give me some cheap buildings and we'll get this thing going. We'll put it up. Look at these shacks here. I can make them attractive.’ And somebody in the Regents said, ‘Yes, they're ‘Mrak shacks’.”
While enrollment growth slowed dramatically by the 1990s, UC Davis continued to expand. Campus made plans for a 140,000-square-foot building to house academic departments in the social sciences and humanities on a parking lot on the edge of campus. This new building would add 340 offices, classrooms, computer teaching laboratories, conference rooms, research and study rooms as well as a 370-seat lecture hall.
At a cost of $25.8 million, paid for by revenue bonds approved by the state Legislature, the building had the lowest cost per square foot of the five social science buildings being planned at the time in the UC system.
A building to recreate the California Central Valley
During the 1960s and 1970s, architect Antoine Predock was known as a regional architect focused on the American Southwest, but his reputation would grow to international renown over his career. Among his works are multiple major university buildings, including the Mandell Weiss Forum at UC San Diego, the Classroom and Laboratory Building at Cal Poly Pomona and the Center for Integrated Systems Building at Stanford.
When designing the Social Sciences and Humanities Building at UC Davis, Predock envisioned that the structure would suggest the geological forces that shaped California’s Central Valley. The two metal-clad banks represent the Sierra Nevada and Coast Ranges.
Between the banks lies a winding valley of sunken courtyards and open spaces intended to celebrate intellectual exchange and cultural vitality. He described the building’s outlying one- and two-story structures, home to academic offices, as “village-like.”
“When I would fly over the San Joaquin Valley, I noticed that the San Joaquin River Delta seemed to interrupt the grid-like parcels which surrounded it,” Predock told UC Davis Magazine in a 2007 interview. “I wanted to incorporate this sense of regional topography into the building.”
He also incorporated the idea of dance into the building design. In 2007 he said, “When I was a student at Columbia University, I became very involved in dance and with the body in space. This influenced my work profoundly. I think of my buildings as choreographic events; they are an accumulation of vantage points.”
The building was also designed to be energy efficient, with recessed windows on the southwest exposures. The two center building blocks were rotated to take advantage of the sun.
Construction took the planned two years. Sadler said that the original plans included a channel of water running through the sunken courtyards, like a valley stream cutting through a grove of trees, so it really would feel like walking through the middle of a canyon. However, this part of the design was scaled back.
Getting lost in the UC Davis Death Star
Sadler recalls that when he first arrived on campus in 2002 and attempted to navigate the Death Star. He found himself in a place where he could see the room he needed to reach but could not figure out how to get there.
Sadler said that one feature of the best architecture is that it has an interesting pathway. To navigate should require more than going through the front door and straight to your destination. The Death Star’s pathways might be a little too interesting.
“Predock wanted the building to feel like a sort of adventure, and he overshot the mark,” said Sadler.
Nearly every student on campus has a story about getting lost in the Death Star. The very idea has risen almost to the level of myth, with students writing stories about their experience for The Aggie. A brave Savannah Holmes once navigated her way — blindfolded and at night — from a classroom in one tower to the library at the very top of the next one.
Sadler said that one of Predock’s ideas was that it’s okay to get lost, because life is routine enough. It would be interesting, he thought, if going into the building felt like going for a hike in the mountains. There would also be opportunities to find amazing, unexpected places where the building opens up to views of a tree-covered Davis or the campus skyline.
The building’s signage hasn’t helped, said Sadler. However, the Letters and Science IT team once installed tablet kiosks throughout the building with a navigation app but they were rarely used, and the tablets were frequently vandalized and stolen until the team took them down a few years ago.
The Death Star as architecture and art
To understand how remarkably unique the Death Star is on campus, Sadler points to a much less controversial building just a hundred feet away. Dutton Hall, completed in 1998, is set back from North Hall and South Hall, two of campus’ first buildings, and is where UC Davis students pay their fees, file for financial aid and receive other services.
Despite its size and glass façade, Dutton largely matches these neighbors with its simple shape and wood siding. Sadler said Dutton Hall’s architecture is contextual. It’s a building designed to fit in with its surroundings.
He added, “I think the other reason that it's trying to respect the context and be quiet is because when they came to do Dutton Hall I think the campus had decided let's never do architecture again, because the Death Star had gone up a few years earlier and was more than they bargained for.”
Architecturally, the Death Star most aligns with a style known as “Deconstructivism,” which carries a language of distorted and angular forms, often making structures feel exploded and like a collection of shards.
Sadler said that Predock thought of architecture as sculpture, putting its form before its function. He would often begin a building’s design by sculpting shapes out of clay, and only afterward would figure out where the rooms would go.
“It's a building principally as a work of art,” said Sadler.
Making new stories at UC Davis
UC Davis has different kinds of landmarks than other universities. Instead of bronze statues of founders or famous luminaries, UC Davis has the Eggheads.
“Which is the exact opposite,” said Sadler. “It shows a humility, an uncertainty about what it is we say and do but it's all honest and authentic.”
While UC Davis has buildings that are beloved, such as the Wyatt Theater and North and South Hall, Sadler points out that the Social Sciences and Humanities Building is the only building on campus to have a nickname.
When a building acquires a nickname, it's attained
a certain sort of mythos.
– Simon Sadler
Students continue to find ways to enjoy the building’s quirks. Several live-action roleplaying games are held there at night. NERF death matches leave foam bullets scattered in stairwells. In April, The Aggie announced that the building would be replaced by a bouncy house.
Before his passing in 2024, Predock said about his building at UC Davis, “That building is very special to me. A lot of the buildings I do are very love-hate. I love this one.”
“One way or another we are learning to live with it,” said Sadler. “Depending on how you rank importance, it is one of the more important buildings on campus.”
Thirty years after the Death Star first opened, seismic renovations began. The two-year, $25 million project strengthened the building’s internal connections and made new fire, accessibility and other code improvements. It also included new concrete walkways and landscaping. Work completed in 2026, when the College of Letters and Science began celebrations for its 75th anniversary.
Predock once said, “The best buildings are time travelers.” He believed that great architecture passes through generations gathering stories.
For the Death Star, some of those stories will surely be about getting lost, but also maybe, with a little help, about finding the way.
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