The UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design, also known as CED, is one of 15 schools and colleges at the University of California, Berkeley. The college is housed in Bauer Wurster Hall at the southeast corner of the main UC Berkeley campus. It includes four departments: the Department of Architecture, the Department of City & Regional Planning, the Department of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning, and the Institute of Urban & Regional Development. In the QS World University Rankings, CED ranks as the top public university in the United States for the study of architecture and the built environment.
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History
The College of Environmental Design was founded in 1959, when Dean William W. Wurster brought together four existing campus units to create a multidisciplinary approach to the built environment: the School of Architecture (founded 1903 by John Galen Howard), the School of Landscape Architecture (founded 1913 by John William Gregg), the Department of City Planning (founded 1948), and the Department of Decorative Arts. Wurster Hall, designed by CED faculty Joseph Esherick, Vernon DeMars, and Donald Olsen to house the new college, opened in 1964; the building was renamed Bauer Wurster Hall in 2020 after archival documentation came to light revealing that the building name was intended to recognize both William W. Wurster and Catherine Bauer Wurster, associate dean of the college, for their contributions to the founding of CED.
History of the Department of Architecture
The earliest days of architectural education at UC Berkeley, founded as California’s land grant college in 1868, is closely associated with Bernard Maybeck (1862–1957), who taught drawing from 1894 to 1903. Among Maybeck’s students – he held informal architecture tutorials at his home in addition to teaching at the college – were Julia Morgan, who became the first woman accepted into the architecture course at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1898, and John Galen Howard, who later became the campus architect and went on to found the department of architecture in 1903. This was the first architecture school to be established in the western United States and only the seventh in the nation.
Like other architecture schools in the United States, the program was founded on the model of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, a legacy that persisted until the middle of the 20th century. Howard served as head until 1927, when his protege Warren Perry (class of 1907) took the helm and retained Howard’s devotion to the Beaux-Arts. In the first few years, classes were held in downtown Berkeley in Howard’s office. From 1906, the architecture school was housed in Northgate Hall, the “Ark,” an example of First Bay Tradition Architecture (now home to the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism).
Many of the architects who shaped the built environment of the Bay Area following the 1906 earthquake and fire trained here under Howard, including John Hudson Thomas, Henry Gutterson, and the designers of San Francisco City Hall and the Golden Gate Bridge.
At midcentury, in response to student demands, the curriculum began to modernize. Erich Mendelsohn, a European modernist who had fled Europe, set up his practice in San Francisco and taught at Berkeley from 1941 until his death in 1953. In 1950, alum William Wurster (class of 1919), co-founder of the firm Wurster, Bernardi, and Emmons, was lured away from MIT to lead the school. He established the College of Environmental Design In 1959 and served as dean until his retirement in 1963.
Undergraduate programs
Bachelor of Arts, Architecture
Bachelor of Arts, Landscape Architecture
Bachelor of Arts, Sustainable Environmental Design
Bachelor of Arts, Urban Studies
Graduate programs
Master of Architecture
Master of Design
Master of Urban Design
Master of City Planning
Master of Landscape Architecture
Master of Real Estate Development and Design
Master of Science, Architecture
Master of Advanced Architectural Design
Ph.D., Architecture
Ph.D., City and Regional Planning
Ph.D., Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning
Faculty and alumni
Deans of the College of Environmental Design
2021–2026: Renee Chow, Dean
2020–2021: Vishaan Chakrabarti, Dean
2019–2020: Renee Chow, Acting Dean
2009–2019: Jennifer Wolch, Dean
2008–2009: Sam Davis, Interim Dean
1996–2008: Harrison Fraker, Dean
1988–1996: Roger Montgomery, Dean
1976–1988: Richard Bender, Dean
1967–1976: William Wheaton, Dean
1966: John E. Burchard, Acting Dean
1963–1966: Martin Meyerson, Dean
1959–1963: William W. Wurster, Dean
Notable alumni
In 1998, CED established the Distinguished Alumni Award to honor alums who have exhibited outstanding public service, in its broadest sense, throughout their careers. Recipients include: David Baker, Fred Blackwell, Kofi Bonner, John Cary, Yung Ho Chang, Clare Cooper Marcus, Dana Cuff, Charles M. Davis, Vernon DeMars, Garrett Eckbo, Lee Ehmke, Frederic C. Girot, Hans Hollein, Ray Kappe, Rodolfo Machado, Gerald M. McCue, Eric Owen Moss, Michael R. Painter, Robert Royston, Stanley Saitowitz, Frederic D. Schwartz, Jorge Silvetti, William K. Stout, Peter Walker, Lewis Watts, and Gwendolyn Wright.
Notable current faculty
Notable current faculty include:
Renee Chow
Kristina Hill
Lisa Iwamoto
Ben Metcalf
Ronald Rael
Neyran Turan
Affiliated research centers
Terner Center for Housing Innovation
Center for the Built Environment
Center for Environmental Design Research
Center for Cities + Schools