Oso Tower, UC Irvine’s newest housing community located in Mesa Court, has opened for the 2025-26 school year. Providing over 400 beds for undergraduate first-year students, some of its amenities include a community center, study rooms, indoor/outdoor lounge spaces, communal kitchens, and food lockers. UCI started construction in 2023, and students began moving in on September 19.
Louis Gill, UCI’s Senior Director of Undergraduate Housing and Residential Life, says planning began in 2022, with its main focus on making Oso the culmination of smaller classics and the larger towers.
“When the tower was conceived we thought ‘how do we build a tower but still maintain some of the aspects of the smaller buildings that build community, that aren’t these large, impersonal structures?’?” Gill told New University.
“When Oso was built, it all came together to be the most refined of that concept: still keeping the quads, big hallways, lots of places for students to go.”
Gill explained how Oso’s amenities allow students to build their own community. The front porch concept, which involves having small seating zones in the hallways, was incorporated into the Oso Tower, allowing students to gather in the hallway.
Oso Tower overlooks the San Joaquin Marsh Reserve, something the architects had in mind when they were designing the tower. According to Gill, Oso Tower is a reflection of the marsh it overlooks.
“The color scheme was drawn from the colors of the Marsh,” Gill said. “There’s colors that reflect what the Marsh would look like at sunset.”
Every detail of the building was carefully thought-out in the planning stage. Due to the known bird-migration patterns in the area, bird-collision deterrent markers were placed on the windows in order to break up the window’s reflection. The building’s location also had to be spot-on to take advantage of the heavy winds and create a nice breeze.
First-year Drama major Keira Leung loves the community-centered feeling Oso Tower gives and expressed how easy it was for her to make new friends there. She recalled her experience visiting each floor, and recognizing the different feeling she gets on each one.
“I traveled all the floors. I visited them all, but the first floor is really tight,” Leung told New University. “I feel like our floor is more on the quiet side, but some floors host karaoke [nights], it’s just crazy.”
The tower includes an ablution room and a dedicated space for religious cleansing rituals open to all students. An inclusive restroom is also located on each floor, complete with a full shower.
“That was one thing that we added that we felt was important for our diverse population. It took a lot of thought and a lot of planning to kind of get it right,” Gill said.
Oso Tower was partially funded by a $65 million grant from California’s Higher Education Student Housing Grant Program, an initiative that aimed to help provide lower-cost housing, according to Gill. UCI was able to award 486 scholarships to undergraduate students at around $3,870 each.
“That is a direct benefit of receiving that money from the state, and being able to fund the project with very little of our own money,” Gill said.
The building was awarded the LEED Platinum certification, the highest level of certification in the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design green building program. UCI has 22 LEED Platinum-certified buildings, which is the most of any new construction on a U.S. university campus. UC Irvine currently houses about 47% of its undergraduate students.
With its emphasis on fostering community, Oso Tower stands as a model for what student housing at UCI can be. Its thoughtful details such as the marsh-inspired color palette and the communal lounges highlight the deeper goal of creating an environment where students feel welcomed. In that sense, Oso Tower is less about the building itself but more about the communities that grow within.
Ennes Kahf is a Features Intern for the fall 2025 quarter. He can be reached at ekahf@uci.edu.
Edited by Avery Rosas and Joshua Gonzales