Courses
Terms offered: Fall 2024, Summer 2024 8 Week Session, Fall 2023
This course will teach anyone how to start to be a designer, not just of drawings and objects, but also buildings, landscapes, and urban spaces. And not just in isolation, but in the complex web of ecological and man-made systems which makes up our shifting environment. You will take from the course first-hand experience of drawing, measuring, and design — which form the basis of the professions of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning— and which culminate in a final design project in the course. The course is open to all undergraduate students.
Introduction to Environmental Design: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Credit Restrictions: Students will receive no credit for ENV DES 1 after completing ENV DES 4.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Summer: 8 weeks - 6 hours of lecture and 4 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Instructors: de Monchaux, Jewell
Terms offered: Summer 2024 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2023 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2022 Second 6 Week Session
The Summer [IN]STITUTE consists of four cohorts, each an introductory course for participants with no previous experience in environmental design: [IN]ARCH, [IN]ARCH ADV, [IN]CITY and [IN]LAND. Institute participants explore the methods and theories of the environmental design disciplines, experience the culture of design and planning studios, connect to faculty and practitioners, and build a portfolio for graduate school application. Each program includes a lecture series, a design or planning studio, a media seminar, and site visits. For more information, visit http://ced.berkeley.edu/academics/summer-programs/summer-institute/.
Summer [IN]STITUTE in Environmental Design: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Summer: 6 weeks - 3 hours of lecture per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam not required.
Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
This course will expose students to key literature that examines, primarily, the relationship between sustainability and environmental design disciplines. Our goal will be not only to investigate the central ideas that inform the design of sustainable landscapes, cities, and buildings, but also to understand how competing arguments are presented in writing. Satisfies the second half of the Reading and Composition Requirement.
Reading and Composition in Energy, Society, and Environmental Design: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Prerequisites: Previously passed an R_A course with a letter grade of C- or better. Previously passed an articulated R_A course with a letter grade of C- or better. Score a 4 on the Advanced Placement Exam in English Literature and Composition. Score a 4 or 5 on the Advanced Placement Exam in English Language and Composition. Score of 5, 6, or 7 on the International Baccalaureate Higher Level Examination in English
Requirements this course satisfies: Satisfies the second half of the Reading and Composition requirement
Repeat rules: Course may be repeated for credit without restriction.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Final exam not required.
Reading and Composition in Energy, Society, and Environmental Design: Read Less [-]
Terms offered: Fall 2020, Fall 2019, Fall 2018
This course explores the relationships between design and activism, raising critical questions about what design is, and how designers serve as guardians of culture and as agents of change. Students will participate in "spontaneous acts of design activism" that address contemporary issues through the making of forms and space to reinvent relationships between people and their environments.
Design and Activism: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Spring 2021, Spring 2020, Spring 2019
This study of cities is more important than ever; for the first time in history more people live in urban than rural areas, and cities will account for all of the world's population growth for at least the next half-century. We will explore the challenges facing global cities in the 21st Century and expose students to some of the key texts, theories, and methods of inquiry that shape the built environment, from the human scale of home and community to the regional scale of the megacity.
Global Cities: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Spring 2021, Spring 2020, Spring 2019
This course is intended to provide students with an overview of current thinking about cities and their components (buildings, parks, streets) as ecological and cultural systems. It will provide an introduction to methods for investigating the dynamics of flows and relationships in the built environment and students will gain experience constructing their own narratives as ways of asking and answering questions about human habitat that could shape the future.
Future Ecologies: Urban Design, Climate Adaptation, and Thermodynamics: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Future Ecologies: Urban Design, Climate Adaptation, and Thermodynamics: Read Less [-]
Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
This course explores cities and landscapes as layered repositories of history, both ecological and human. Examining environmental design history and practice, it highlights how deep time legacies are acknowledged or ignored in placemaking, including racialized spatial histories. In addressing the role of architecture, city planning, and landscape design in shaping places and giving them meaning, the course explores the diversity of spatially defined experiences and the ways in which they are shaped by policy and professional practice. Case studies on Bay Area urban and social geography are linked with transnational histories and design movements to highlight the larger forces that have shaped the local historical and social landscape.
Cities and Sites: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture per week
Summer: 8 weeks - 8 hours of lecture per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternative to final exam.
Instructors: Castillo, Hood
Terms offered: Summer 2024 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2023 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2022 Second 6 Week Session
Guided by UC Berkeley faculty, Bay Area urbanists, designers, makers, and entrepreneurs, Disc* students learn how to confront the most pressing challenges of global urbanization using innovative people-centered design. Through design and digital fabrication studio sessions, lectures and talks, demos and workshops, field work and site visits, students have the opportunity to develop and test their own creative ideas while working with some of the most forward-thinking researchers and practitioners from the Bay Area design community. Disc* graduates have a strong understanding of the present and future of global urbanization processes and a broad toolkit with which to tackle its most urgent demands.
Disc*: Design & Innovation for Sustainable Cities: Read More [+]
Objectives & Outcomes
Course Objectives: •
Construct a project that bridges from conception to design and production.
•
Design a product, artifact or intervention that affects environmental awareness or change.
•
Identify the major debates around global urbanization.
•
Understand the importance of user experience.
•
Understand the issues of spatial scales and levels of intervention.
•
Understand the potentials and dangers of design and technology interventions.
Hours & Format
Summer: 5 weeks - 15 hours of studio, 4 hours of laboratory, 4 hours of lecture, and 4 hours of seminar per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternate method of final assessment during regularly scheduled final exam group (e.g., presentation, final project, etc.).
Disc*: Design & Innovation for Sustainable Cities: Read Less [-]
Terms offered: Summer 2024 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2023 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2022 Second 6 Week Session
embARC is a four week summer design intensive that brings together high school students from diverse backgrounds to explore architecture, urban design and sustainable city planning through three components: an Architecture & Urban Design Studio, a Sustainable City Planning Workshop and a Design-Build project. For more information, visit http://ced.berkeley.edu/academics/summer-programs/embarc-design-academy/
embARC Summer Design Academy: Read More [+]
Objectives & Outcomes
Student Learning Outcomes: Be exposed to actual public policy issues and make a real impact on the bay area community.
Build a design portfolio to use when applying to college.
Earn a certificate of completion and 1 unit of credit on an official UC Berkeley transcript.
Explore architecture, urban design and city planning as possible college majors and careers.
Hone and develop two and three dimensional design skills through college-level coursework.
Immerse yourself in design studio culture and the college campus experience.
Work in a team environment with peers who have similar interests.
Hours & Format
Summer: 4 weeks - 5 hours of studio, 5 hours of laboratory, and 2.5 hours of lecture per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternate method of final assessment during regularly scheduled final exam group (e.g., presentation, final project, etc.).
Instructor: Suczynski-Smith
Terms offered: Spring 2011, Fall 2009, Fall 2008
With emphasis on key events of the 20th and now 21st century, this course introduces the big ideas and individuals that have shaped architecture, urban planning, and landscape architecture.
The History of Thought in Environmental Design: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Prerequisites: None. Open to all undergraduates in the College of Environmental Design and other colleges and majors
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture per week
Summer: 8 weeks - 6 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
The History of Thought in Environmental Design: Read Less [-]
Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Berkeley Connect is a mentoring program, offered through various academic departments, that helps students build intellectual community. Over the course of a semester, enrolled students participate in regular small-group discussions facilitated by a graduate student mentor (following a faculty-directed curriculum), meet with their graduate student mentor for one-on-one academic advising, attend lectures and panel discussions featuring department faculty and alumni, and go on field trips to campus resources. Students are not required to be declared majors in order to participate.
Berkeley Connect: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Repeat rules: Course may be repeated for credit without restriction.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 1 hour of seminar per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Offered for pass/not pass grade only. Final exam not required.
Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022
This course is concerned with the study of cities. Focusing on great cities around the world - from Chicago to Los Angeles, from Rio to Shanghai, from Vienna to Cairo it covers of historical and contemporary patterns of urbanization and urbanism. Through these case studies, it introduces the key ideas, debates, and research genres of the interdisciplinary field of urban studies. In other words, this is simultaneously a "great cities" and "great theories" course. Its purpose is to train students in critical analysis of the socio-spatial formations of their lived world.
The City: Theories and Methods in Urban Studies: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Summer: 8 weeks - 6 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Instructor: Roy
The City: Theories and Methods in Urban Studies: Read Less [-]
Terms offered: Spring 2021, Spring 2020, Spring 2019
An intensive workshop for students interested in writing about architecture, landscape, and the built environment. Recognizing that undergraduate students who take this course represent departments outside as well as within the College of Environmental Design, assignments are touchstones for students of different disciplines to bring their current academic interests into play when writing about environmental design. Weekly assignments include prose readings, generally essays related to life experience. Brief readings and discussions during each class, along with weekly writing assignments of 3-5 pages of prose will illustrate the skills involved in the craft of writing.
Writing about Environmental Design: Short Compositions: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Prerequisites: English 1B and consent of instructor
Repeat rules: Course may be repeated for credit without restriction.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 10 weeks - 3 hours of laboratory and .5 hours of tutorial per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam not required.
Instructor: Lifchez
Formerly known as: 101
Writing about Environmental Design: Short Compositions: Read Less [-]
Terms offered: Fall 2019, Fall 2018, Fall 2017
In 101B: The Notebook (one long composition in 14 weekly assignments) assigned readings (principally short stories) offer examples of writing which parallel the focus of the week's writing assignment. Prompts and assigned readings encourage the individual development of a "story" or "theme" that each student at the outset or in the process of writing, arrives at a personal narrative. Course approved for English department credit and UC Undergraduate Minor in Creative Writing.
Writing about Environmental Design: One Longer Composition: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Prerequisites: English 1B and consent of instructor
Repeat rules: Course may be repeated for credit without restriction.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of seminar per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam not required.
Instructor: Lifchez
Formerly known as: 101
Writing about Environmental Design: One Longer Composition: Read Less [-]
Terms offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2022
This course introduces students to major issues in urban resilience and adaptation planning, particularly in relation to anthropogenic climate change. By the end of the course, students will have: (1) a critical understanding of key concepts such as risk, vulnerability, adaptation, and resilience; (2) an understanding of the interaction between adaptation planning, policy, and urban operating systems such as infrastructures, finance, and land use governance; (3) a basic introduction to practical tools such as vulnerability mapping, urban carbon budgeting, and participatory vulnerability assessment. The course will primarily draw on case material from the United States and secondarily from selected international cases.
Climate Change and City Planning: Adaptation and Resilience: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture per week
Summer: 8 weeks - 6 hours of lecture per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternative to final exam.
Instructor: Collier
Climate Change and City Planning: Adaptation and Resilience: Read Less [-]
Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
This course begins with an open-ended question (“What is design?”) and asks students to think critically about the central tenets, commonalities, and limits of design in an ever-changing complex world. A historical and theoretical overview of predominant schools of thought across all scales of design (i.e. industrialization, modernism, post-modernism, and beyond) will ground the discussions to follow. Topics related to environmental sustainability including industrial ecologies, ecological design principles, lifecycle, biomimicry, LEED and accreditation systems, and closed-loop cycles will be presented.
Design Frameworks: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Fall 2013, Fall 2012, Fall 2011
Design problems from an ecological perspective. Design studies of relationships among ecosystem, energy, and resource flows, human social and cultural values, and technological variables as they interact to produce the built environment.
Deep Green Design: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Prerequisites: Consent of instructor and upper division standing. Students are to have taken at least one design studio and one course on sustainable design prior to taking this course
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 4 hours of seminar per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Instructor: Ubbelohde
Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
This course asks students to reflect back, reviewing the various disciplinary approaches introduced toward sustainability and to look forward by proposing interdisciplinary ways to affect the environment. Each year will be organized around a theme and project advanced by the faculty of the College. The workshop will require independent as well as collaborative research often in partnership with an external 'client' organization.
Sustainable Environmental Design Workshop: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Prerequisites: Environmental Design 102
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 4 hours of lecture per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternative to final exam.
Terms offered: Fall 2016
This course explores contemporary debates around race, gender, sexuality, disability rights and other forms of embodied politics and considers their potential to transform the normative assumptions and practices of the built environment disciplines. Concepts such as self-abstraction, assimilation, and discourses of the “universal” or neutral body will be examined critically in relation to socially situated theories of power, identity, and activism. The course will investigate case studies of everyday objects, buildings and urban space that exemplify the creative limits and possibilities of embodied difference in the design process. Weekly reading responses, class discussions, presentations, and a final project are required.
Design and Difference: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Prerequisites: Completion of a minimum of one design studio, two studios preferred
Repeat rules: Course may be repeated for credit when topic changes.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of seminar per week
Summer: 8 weeks - 6 hours of seminar per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternative to final exam.
Terms offered: Spring 2020
The College of Environmental Design's founding vision was to bring the making of buildings, landscapes, and cities together to meet diverse human needs. To address problems facing today's global cities and regions, we need to build the disciplinary bridges that prepare practitioners and scholars who can work together on solutions. This special topics CED multi-disciplinary course focuses on themes or issues in environmental design; takes substantial account of issues drawn from at least two of the three disciplinary areas in the college (architecture, landscape architecture and environmental planning, or city and regional planning); and presents the disciplinary perspectives of the issues in integrative or comparative ways.
Special Topics in Environmental Design: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Prerequisites: Consent of instructor
Repeat rules: Course may be repeated for credit when topic changes.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 2-4 hours of seminar per week
Summer: 8 weeks - 4-7.5 hours of seminar per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternative to final exam.
Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
This class aims to help you engage with and navigate the resources of the CED, including a broad overview of sustainability in contemporary life. In discussions and guest lectures, we will frame contemporary conversations around sustainability with an emphasis on current dialogues. Guest speakers will share their perspectives about how the discussion of sustainability can and should be framed. You will be introduced to important campus resources and faculty who will assist you in designing your own path through the Sustainable Environmental Design program.
Designing Sustainability: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternative to final exam.
Terms offered: Summer 2019 10 Week Session
The question of how we see, record, recall and reconstruct places is of primary interest in this course. This inquiry will prove to be the underpinning pursuit of our investigations this summer while in Spain. We will not only explore different territories but we will also experiment with different methodologies of reconnaissance and attempt to maintain a presence so that the places we visit also become manifest to us in their phenomenal and experiential states.
Imagining, re-Envisioning the Urban Setting: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Summer: 10 weeks - 9 hours of lecture and 18 hours of fieldwork per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternative to final exam.
Instructor: Salazar-Jasbon
Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
The Community Design Process will give CED undergraduate students the opportunity to effect change in the Bay Area through direct engagement and mentorship of Bay Area teens. Through a unique partnership with FamFirst Family Foundation, undergraduates will support a new generation of innovative thinkers to create solutions for the future of Oakland and the world. This interdisciplinary course will engage undergraduates in activities that range from curriculum development to direct mentorship, teaching, project planning, project management, and direct engagement with FamFirst teens at the West Oakland Youth Center.
The Community Design Process: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Prerequisites: Please note that there is a formal application process for enrollment in this course
Repeat rules: Course may be repeated for credit without restriction.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 4 hours of fieldwork per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternative to final exam.
Formerly known as: Environmental Design 31
Terms offered: Summer 2021 8 Week Session, Summer 2021 First 6 Week Session
This project-based, community-engaged course teaches students how to study and represent the past and potential future of a specific place in collaboration with its residents, with an emphasis on centering marginalized stories and influencing positive change. This is a humanities studio course, rooted in history, literature and film; using creative arts tools; incorporating spatially oriented methods from architecture, landscape architecture, and city planning; and social sciences approaches from geography, anthropology and sociology. At a location chosen by the instructor, students will work with a community organization to create exhibitions, oral histories, installations, public archives, performances, plans, websites, or publications.
Future Histories Studio: Revealing the Past, Imagining the Future: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Requirements this course satisfies: Satisfies the American Cultures requirement
Repeat rules: Course may be repeated for credit up to a total of 1 time.
Hours & Format
Summer:
6 weeks - 7.5-9.5 hours of lecture per week
8 weeks - 6-8 hours of lecture per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternative to final exam.
Also listed as: HUM 132AC
Future Histories Studio: Revealing the Past, Imagining the Future: Read Less [-]
Terms offered: Spring 2023
This project-based, community-engaged course teaches students how to study and represent the past and potential future of a specific place in collaboration with its residents, with an emphasis on centering marginalized stories and influencing positive change. This is a humanities studio course, rooted in history, literature and film; using creative arts tools; incorporating spatially oriented methods from architecture, landscape architecture, and city planning; and social sciences approaches from geography, anthropology and sociology. At a location chosen by the instructor, students will work with a community organization to create exhibitions, oral histories, installations, public archives, performances, plans, websites, or publications.
Future Histories Studio: Revealing the Past, Imagining the Future: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Repeat rules: Course may be repeated for credit up to a total of 1 time.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 4-6 hours of lecture per week
Summer:
6 weeks - 7.5-9 hours of lecture per week
8 weeks - 6-8 hours of lecture per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternative to final exam.
Also listed as: HUM C132
Future Histories Studio: Revealing the Past, Imagining the Future: Read Less [-]
Terms offered: Summer 2023 8 Week Session, Summer 2022 8 Week Session
This course explores the ways history and memory are represented or erased in public space and how this affects policies and futures. We will examine monuments, public art, streets, parks, museums, archives, performative traditions and virtual space. Students will propose ways of representing history in public space as a way to shape future histories. We will explore the concept of “public history” and study artistic and literary representations of the past. We will consider the ways that city planning and urban design have used or ignored memory and meaning. Highlighting landscapes shaped by economic inequality, migration, incarceration, and racism, we will analyze what is hidden, forgotten, missing, or in need of representation.
Hidden in Plain Sight: Public History in Public Space: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Summer: 8 weeks - 6 hours of lecture per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternate method of final assessment during regularly scheduled final exam group (e.g., presentation, final project, etc.).
Also listed as: HUM 133AC
Hidden in Plain Sight: Public History in Public Space: Read Less [-]
Terms offered: Prior to 2007
This course explores relationships between data, design and activism, raising critical questions about what data and data analytics are; what design is; and how both data and design can serve to protect the status quo as well as become agents of change. In turn, the course also surveys the ways in which activism has historically played a role in data analysis and design practice at the scales of planning, architecture, landscape, and cities.
Through lectures, readings, and exercises, students explore data/design activism or the use of data analytics and design interventions to catalyze change.
Data, Design and Activism: Read More [+]
Objectives & Outcomes
Course Objectives: To develop effective communication skills – graphic, written, and verbal.
To gain familiarity with the language and process of data analysis and design through media including mapping, visualization, drawing and making.
To recognize the value of sustainability at all levels of data analytics and design.
To understand applications of architecture, landscape architecture, and city planning through the social context of data and design interventions.
To understand major debates in the literature of data and design activism.
To understand the implications of environmental design in local, national, and global settings.
Hours & Format
Summer: 6 weeks - 7.5 hours of lecture per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Instructor: Wolch
Terms offered: Summer 2022 First 6 Week Session
This course (1) provides a basic introduction to the use of maps in society, using critical frameworks to analyze the politics and epistemologies of spatial and temporal maps; (2) explores conceptions of justice across different spatial arenas, with a focus on how visualization shapes such notions; and (3) teaches visualization and story mapping techniques for social activism.
Maps as Social Justice Interventions: Read More [+]
Objectives & Outcomes
Course Objectives: To develop effective communication skills – graphic, written, and verbal.
To gain familiarity with the language and process of data analysis and design through data collection, geospatial analysis, and mapping.
To recognize the value of social justice and equity in data analysis and visualization.
To understand applications of architecture, landscape architecture, and city planning through the social context of spatial data and mapping.
To understand major debates in the literature of GIS and society.
To understand the implications of environmental design in urban and regional settings.
Hours & Format
Summer: 6 weeks - 8 hours of lecture per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Instructor: Chapple
Terms offered: Summer 2024 First 6 Week Session, Summer 2023 First 6 Week Session, Summer 2022 First 6 Week Session
The equitable design, implementation and management of our urban landscapes requires an interdisciplinary skillset that hinges on the understanding of environmental, political, and community factors that give rise to complex socio-economic and socio-demographic patterns. Students will use urban data analytics and design methods at various scales – from neighborhood to regional – with an emphasis on balancing between sustainable development and green equity as we strive to address a changing climate.
Urban Landscapes and Green Equity: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Summer: 6 weeks - 6 hours of lecture and 1.5 hours of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternate method of final assessment during regularly scheduled final exam group (e.g., presentation, final project, etc.).
Instructor: Mozingo
Terms offered: Summer 2024 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2023 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2022 Second 6 Week Session
The course explores immersive technologies and spatial computing tools such as Virtual and Augmented Reality in their potential to coalesce and make visible the social and cultural forces that inhabit and animate the built environment. First-person experiences enabled by immersive technologies are increasingly being extended too multi-user ecosystems that pave the way for novel collaborative design and community participation platforms. Design methods traditionally associated with the built environment can be augmented by overlaying of data, communications, multimodal media formats and storytelling, with horizontally disruptive potential across different fields.
Participatory Community Design: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Summer: 6 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 4.5 hours of laboratory per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternate method of final assessment during regularly scheduled final exam group (e.g., presentation, final project, etc.).
Instructor: Caldas
Terms offered: Summer 2024 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2023 Second 6 Week Session
[IN]ARCH is an intensive six-week program designed to immerse students in the foundational theories, philosophical principles and
technical practices of architectural design. The program teaches fundamentals of design, studio culture and architectural discourse with an emphasis on two linked but distinct components: studio instruction and media instruction. These will be supplemented by a lecture series, field trips, readings and project reviews.
[IN]ARCH: Read More [+]
Objectives & Outcomes
Course Objectives: [IN]ARCH is geared towards post-baccalaureate students who are considering graduate study in landscape architecture. Successful students will build a quality portfolio that can be used for further academic pursuits on a graduate level. No previous design experience is necessary.
Student Learning Outcomes: The media component of the course provides practical knowledge as well as historical and conceptual context for various modes of representation. These techniques are both analog and digital, covering two and three-dimensional representational concerns through drawing, modeling and presentation & portfolio development.
Hours & Format
Summer: 6 weeks - 6 hours of lecture, 8 hours of laboratory, and 12 hours of studio per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternative to final exam.
Terms offered: Summer 2024 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2023 Second 6 Week Session
[IN]CITY is an intensive six-week program designed to immerse students in city planning and urban design. By attending daily lectures and engaging in studio work, participants acquire the skills necessary to inform planning proposals. [IN]CITY assignments are based on real projects with actual clients who represent a diverse group of stakeholder organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area. These organizations actively aim to influence sustainable planning policy at the local, county and regional levels.
[IN]CITY: Read More [+]
Objectives & Outcomes
Course Objectives: [IN]CITY is geared towards post-baccalaureate students who are considering graduate study in urban design and city & regional planning. Successful students will build a quality portfolio that can be used for further academic pursuits on a graduate level. No previous planning or urban design experience is necessary.
Student Learning Outcomes: [IN]CITY students develop in-depth recommendations, analyses and proposals for these client projects, which run the gamut of planning practice: housing and design, bike mobility and transportation, public health and environmental justice, community development and gentrification, urban design, climate action and art in public spaces. In doing so, participants have an opportunity to influence planning in the Bay Area by exploring institutional, political, social, economic and environmental policy challenges.
Hours & Format
Summer: 6 weeks - 10 hours of lecture, 4 hours of laboratory, and 12 hours of studio per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternative to final exam.
Terms offered: Summer 2024 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2023 Second 6 Week Session
[IN]LAND is an intensive six-week program designed to immerse students in landscape architecture. Students are learning the
fundamentals of landscape architectural practice through the process of making and experimentation as research into site potentials. Initial ideas are developed and transformed through rigorous investigation in a collaborative studio environment. Students develop a landscape vocabulary that engages with the concepts of ecology, public space, sustainability and multiple scales of design.
[IN]LAND: Read More [+]
Objectives & Outcomes
Course Objectives: [IN]LAND is geared towards post-baccalaureate students who are considering graduate study in landscape architecture. Successful students will build a quality portfolio that can be used for further academic pursuits on a graduate level. No previous design experience is necessary.
Student Learning Outcomes: Throughout the course, students learn to express a site in terms of its organizational and relational characteristics while investigating a range of potential conditions over time. Individually and collectively, students pursue inquiries that are agile and flexible, and experiment with various mediums to uncover hidden aspects of processes, spaces and materiality.
Hours & Format
Summer: 6 weeks - 3 hours of lecture, 6 hours of laboratory, and 16 hours of studio per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternative to final exam.
Terms offered: Prior to 2007
The [IN]DESIGN Program is an intensive architectural studio for students to engage in the study of architecture as an interface to the environment, landscape, and urbanism. Weekly lectures and
design assignments are taught on Zoom through visual critiques on a Miro virtual gallery board. The series of eight weekly assignments are developed cumulatively into one building / landscape project
sited along the San Francisco waterfront. The studio ends with a portfolio workshop for graduate school applications.
[IN]DESIGN: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Summer: 8 weeks - 3 hours of lecture per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Alternative to final exam.
Terms offered: Fall 2014, Fall 2013, Fall 2012, Fall 2011
Introduces ways of seeing and interpreting American histories and cultures, as revealed in everyday built surroundings-- houses, highways, farms, factories, stores, recreation areas, small towns, city districts, and regions. Encourages students to read landscapes as records of past and present social relations and to speculate for themselves about cultural meaning.
American Cultural Landscapes, 1600 to 1900: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Instructor: Groth
Also listed as: AMERSTD C112A/GEOG C160A
Terms offered: Spring 2017, Spring 2015, Spring 2014
Introduces ways of seeing and interpreting American histories and cultures, as revealed in everyday built surroundings--homes, highways, farms, factories, stores, recreation areas, small towns, city districts, and regions. Encourages students to read landscapes as records of past and present social relations, and to speculate for themselves about cultural meaning.
American Cultural Landscapes, 1900 to Present: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Instructor: Groth
Also listed as: AMERSTD C112B/GEOG C160B
American Cultural Landscapes, 1900 to Present: Read Less [-]
Terms offered: Spring 2012, Spring 2011, Spring 2010
What is the social art of architecture in America? What was it historically, where is it now, where is it going--and why should you care? In this course, we will explore contemporary and historic attempts to confront social needs through themes: Design by Professionals (Architects, City Planners, Urban Designers, Sociologists, Philosophers, Philanthropists), and Design by Laypeople (Squatters, Intentional Communities, Do It Yourself). The objective is to discharge the false dualism that has emerged in architecture between social concerns and creative design.
The Social Art of Architecture: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Repeat rules: Course may be repeated for credit without restriction.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 2 hours of seminar per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam not required.
Instructor: Lifchez
Terms offered: Summer 2014 8 Week Session, Summer 2013 10 Week Session
This is a zero-unit internship course for F-1, non-immigrant, international students participating in internships under the Curricular Practical Training program. Requires a paper exploring how the theoretical contructs learned in Environmental Design courses were applied during the internship.
Curricular Practical Training for International Students: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Prerequisites: International students only
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 0 hours of internship per week
Summer: 8 weeks - 0 hours of internship per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Offered for pass/not pass grade only. Final exam not required.
Curricular Practical Training for International Students: Read Less [-]
Terms offered: Fall 2012, Fall 2011, Spring 2011
Directed study leading to preparation of a senior thesis.
Senior Thesis: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Prerequisites: Limited to students with approved individual majors in the College of Environmental Design
Repeat rules: Course may be repeated for credit up to a total of 8 units.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 0 hours of independent study per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam required.
Terms offered: Fall 2014, Fall 2013
The Senior Thesis in Environmental Design is an advanced research and writing project that presents an original and thorough analysis of a topic of individual interest in architecture, landscape architecture, or urban studies. This class provides an introducion to various methodologies relevant for a senior thesis including qualitative, quantitative, and descriptive research approaches.
Introduction to Methods and Thesis Preparation: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of seminar per week
Summer: 8 weeks - 6 hours of seminar per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam not required.
Introduction to Methods and Thesis Preparation: Read Less [-]
Terms offered: Summer 2021 8 Week Session, Spring 2017, Spring 2014
Students taking this class will use it to complete the writing of their thesis under the supervision of a Senior Thesis Advisor. This class will operate as an independent study; faculty with more than one Senior Thesis student may choose to meet them in group sessions.
Thesis Research and Writing: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Prerequisites: Environmental Design 195A
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of independent study per week
Summer: 8 weeks - 6 hours of independent study per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Letter grade. Final exam not required.
Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2023, Fall 2019
This is a special topics course intended to fulfill the individual interests of students, and provide a vehicle for professors to instruct students based on new and innovative developments in the field of environmental design.
Directed Group Study: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Prerequisites: Restricted to 3rd and 4th year students
Credit Restrictions: Enrollment is restricted; see the Introduction to Courses and Curricula section of this catalog.
Repeat rules: Course may be repeated for credit without restriction.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 1-4 hours of directed group study per week
Summer:
6 weeks - 2.5-10 hours of directed group study per week
8 weeks - 2-8 hours of directed group study per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Offered for pass/not pass grade only. Final exam not required.
Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Berkeley Connect is a mentoring program, offered through various academic departments, that helps students build intellectual community. Over the course of a semester, enrolled students participate in regular small-group discussions facilitated by a graduate student mentor (following a faculty-directed curriculum), meet with their graduate student mentor for one-on-one academic advising, attend lectures and panel discussions featuring department faculty and alumni, and go on field trips to campus resources. Students are not required to be declared majors in order to participate.
Berkeley Connect: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Repeat rules: Course may be repeated for credit without restriction.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 1 hour of seminar per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Offered for pass/not pass grade only. Final exam not required.
Terms offered: Fall 2023, Spring 2018, Fall 2017
Enrollment is restricted by regulations in the General Catalog. Studies developed to meet individual needs.
Supervised Independent Study and Research: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Prerequisites: Must have upper division standing
Credit Restrictions: Enrollment is restricted; see the section on Academic Policies-Course Number Guide in the Berkeley Bulletin.
Repeat rules: Course may be repeated for credit without restriction.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 1-4 hours of independent study per week
Summer:
6 weeks - 2.5-10 hours of independent study per week
8 weeks - 2-7.5 hours of independent study per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Undergraduate
Grading/Final exam status: Offered for pass/not pass grade only. Final exam not required.
Terms offered: Summer 2024 10 Week Session, Summer 2023 10 Week Session, Summer 2022 10 Week Session
An intensive studio involving collaborative work on problems that are large in scope, yet require attention to spatial organization and design details.
The studio course is offered each fall semester and required for incoming graduate students in the Master of Urban Design Program (MUD). The course is also open to College of Environmental Design graduate students of advanced standing in the Master of City Planning Program/ Urban Design Concentration, the Master of Architecture and Master of Landscape Architecture Programs.
Urban Design Fundamentals Studio: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Prerequisites: Students enrolled in the Master of Urban Design program have priority. Others welcome with consent of instructor
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of seminar and 5 hours of studio per week
Summer: 10 weeks - 6 hours of seminar and 6 hours of studio per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Graduate
Grading: Letter grade.
Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
The advanced urban design studio builds on the conceptual and design skills taught in the introductory studio, adding more complex contexts, sites and programs. The studio will address realistic contemporary urban, suburban, or rural situations requiring innovative solutions. The studio projects will be either sponsored or led by professional firms. Students will undertake in-depth research, understand economic, political, social, and cultural dynamics, investigate challenging sites, and produce creative responses.
Advanced Urban Design Studio: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Credit Restrictions: Students will receive no credit for ENV DES 202 after completing ENV DES 202. A deficient grade in ENV DES 202 may be removed by taking ENV DES 202.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 8 hours of studio per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Graduate
Grading: Letter grade.
Instructor: Crawford
Terms offered: Prior to 2007
This course explores contemporary debates around race, gender, sexuality, disability rights and other forms of embodied politics and considers their potential to transform the normative assumptions and practices of the built environment disciplines. Concepts such as self-abstraction, assimilation, and discourses of the “universal” or neutral body will be examined critically in relation to socially situated theories of power, identity, and activism. The course will investigate case studies of everyday objects, buildings and urban space that exemplify the creative limits and possibilities of embodied difference in the design process. Weekly reading responses, class discussions, presentations, and a final project are required.
Design and Difference: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Repeat rules: Course may be repeated for credit when topic changes.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of seminar per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Graduate
Grading: Letter grade.
Terms offered: Fall 2023
This course focuses on four inter-connected areas of pedagogy important to urban planning, design, and public policy that repair, rather than perpetuate, systemic harm. First, we will examine the main tenets of critical race theory to address the structural roots and history of injustice. Second, students will learn the theory, methodology and practice of transformative community planning, design and public policy principles that center the lived experiences, experiential knowledge, and agency of people directly impacted by systemic injustice. Third, we will examine the role of individual and collective healing focusing on the principles of restorative justice. Fourth, we will explore the theory and practice of love-based justice.
Critical Race Theory in Planning, Design, and Public Policy: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Graduate
Grading: Letter grade.
Also listed as: PUB POL C231
Critical Race Theory in Planning, Design, and Public Policy: Read Less [-]
Terms offered: Summer 2024 8 Week Session, Summer 2022 8 Week Session, Fall 2021
The course is the first of three courses (ED251, ED252, ED253) directed toward the development of research and design proposals that advance the field of urban design. As the first course in the sequence, ED251 introduces topics and research methods in contemporary urban design. There is a lecture component (Section 1) that is open to the College and campus. Graduate students preparing for theses and professional reports in urban design will enroll in Section 2, which includes attending the lectures as well as a seminar that expands on the lecture topics by exploring various research and design methodologies.
Discourses in Urban Design: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Prerequisites: The one unit section is open to all students. The three unit section is for students enrolled in the Master of Urban Design program or those who have obtained the consent of the instructor
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 1-3 hours of seminar per week
Summer: 8 weeks - 3-6 hours of seminar per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Graduate
Grading: Letter grade.
Terms offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023
Seminar focuses on individual urban design interests, the design and research work that students are pursuing in other courses, and development of thesis or final design projects.
Thesis Research and Preparation: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Prerequisites: Students must be in the Master of Urban Design program or obtain consent of instructor
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of seminar per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Graduate
Grading: Letter grade.
Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Summer 2023 10 Week Session
A studio for Masters of Urban Design students aimed to support students during the final months of their thesis work. Faculty will hold bi-weekly individual desk critiques of student work and organize preliminary reviews to outside reviewers in preparation of the final review scheduled at the end of the semester.
Thesis Studio: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Prerequisites: 252
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 6 hours of studio per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Graduate
Grading: Offered for satisfactory/unsatisfactory grade only.
Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
This Clinic seeks to develop students to advance an anti-racist future guided by the principles of love, healing, and justice. Students are required to enroll in the companion theory course, EnvDes C231, Critical Race Theory in Planning, Design, and Public Policy. This Clinic focuses on four areas of professional practice. First, students are supervised by experienced professional practitioners. Second, students will learn the framework of racial equity analysis through applied theoretical frameworks and case study pedagogy. Third, students will apply the framework of racial equity analysis to real-world projects. Fourth, students will engage in reflection of their experiences through peer learning and regular journal entries.
Dismantling Racism in Planning, Design, and Public Policy Clinic: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Repeat rules: Course may be repeated for credit with instructor consent.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 7-9 hours of clinic and 3-3 hours of lecture per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Graduate
Grading: Offered for satisfactory/unsatisfactory grade only.
Also listed as: PUB POL 297A
Dismantling Racism in Planning, Design, and Public Policy Clinic: Read Less [-]
Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
Topics to be announced at the beginning of each semester.
Environmental Design Group Studies: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Prerequisites: Consent of instructor
Repeat rules: Course may be repeated for credit without restriction.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring:
4 weeks - 4-14 hours of directed group study per week
15 weeks - 1-4 hours of directed group study per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Graduate
Grading: Offered for satisfactory/unsatisfactory grade only.
Terms offered: Summer 2024 8 Week Session
Topics are announced at the beginning of the semester.
Directed Group Study: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Summer: 8 weeks - 3-5 hours of directed group study per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Graduate
Grading: Letter grade.
Terms offered: Fall 2023
Professional courses for prospective teachers.
Supervised Teaching: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Prerequisites: Appointment as graduate student instructor
Repeat rules: Course may be repeated for credit without restriction.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 2-4 hours of independent study per week
Additional Details
Subject/Course Level: Environmental Design/Professional course for teachers or prospective teachers
Grading: Offered for satisfactory/unsatisfactory grade only.