David K. Woo:
Continuing to Build a Legacy for CED

David K. Woo ’67 credits his parents with knowing that UC Berkeley was the perfect place for his higher education. Now a successful architect, businessman and developer in Hong Kong, and director of the Hong Kong-based Woo Hon Fai Holdings, Woo made an impact at Cal even in his early years. Newly arrived as a [...]

CED and the Occupy Movement

The Occupy Wall Street movement, and its cousins that have emerged in cities across the country, arrived on the UC Berkeley campus last fall in the form of “Occupy Cal.” Students set up small camping tents outside Sproul Hall in front of Savio Steps, named for the famed free speech activist, Mario Savio. Police, in [...]

Design for Urban Places

The interdisciplinary Graduate Group for the Design of Urban Places was established in 1996, and offers the Master of Urban Design degree, a one-year post-professional program that draws students from across the globe. Last spring Dean Wolch and the Graduate Division, invited Dennis Frenchman (MIT), Darren Petrucci (Arizona State University), and Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris (UCLA) to [...]

Collaborative Planning in Nairobi’s Informal Settlements

In the informal settlements of one of Africa’s most impoverished cities, Department of City & Regional Planning (DCRP) students are working to make a difference in the lives of the urban poor. The second collaborative planning studio between the department and the University of Nairobi Department of Urban and Regional Planning took place during the [...]

Emily Pilloton and Project H Design: Supporting Community

Author, industrial designer, architect, educator, social activist, and leader, Emily Pilloton (B.A. Architecture, 2003) is a firm believer that design and the designer can and should have world-changing social impact. She is the Founder and Executive Director of the 501c3 nonprofit organization Project H Design, a grassroots network dedicated to using design to create positive [...]

Everyone Needs Fresh Air!

In the Summer of 2011, the College of Environmental Design at UC Berkeley had the privilege of being among a small number of distinguished international universities invited by the National University of Singapore to compete in a 5-year series of urban architecture competitions, Vertical Cities Asia. The competition focuses on the pressing issues of rapidly [...]

Connecting Cairo to the Nile

Renewing Life and Heritage on the River In 2010, we conceived a plan to craft a collaborative learning experience and to catalyze a new understanding of the Nile as a public resource for the people of Cairo. With a population of over eleven million, Cairo is one of the densest cities in the world, supporting [...]

How Pastoral Capitalism Reshaped the Metropolitan Landscape

Pastoral Capitalism Enlarge [+]Site plan of the 1956 General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan, an early and influential corporate campus. The essential site plan components of the corporate campus are the central open space surrounded by laboratory buildings circumscribed by peripheral parking and driveways. Corporations built corporate campuses to house middle management research and [...]

Wudadao

Imagine working on the revitalization of a 500 acre historic district in China—in a city that just demolished all of its courtyard compounds within its original walled city. Last year, this was the task for fourteen M.Arch students in their final year of study. The City of Tianjin is China’s third economic development zone (with [...]