UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design is ranked the No. 1 public university in the U.S. for architecture and the built environment.
Research & Design
Research Centers & Labs
The Terner Center for Housing Innovation’s mission is to formulate bold strategies to house families from all walks of life in vibrant, sustainable, and affordable homes and communities. Its work provides analysis and data-driven research to support policy and innovation for policymakers, practitioners, and advocates.
The mission of the Center for the Built Environment, an affiliated research center, is to improve the environmental quality and energy efficiency of buildings by providing timely, unbiased information on building technologies, design, and operation strategies. Its core research team includes faculty from the Department of Architecture.
CED faculty across departments and disciplines direct research labs that tackle a range of environmental and design issues. These labs are engines for the production of knowledge and new discoveries in the college and provide valuable research opportunities for students.
Research from the Center for Cities & Schools shows how low-wealth districts are being left behind and informs the current debate over policy reform. The National Center on School Infrastructure (NCSI) is a national resource hub for modernizing school buildings and grounds. Both centers are housed in CED’s Institute of Urban & Regional Development.
“The spectrum of course offerings — from theoretical to practical, from global to local — was my favorite part of my CED education. I took classes from faculty who served as planning commissioners for the city of Berkeley and from those who are pushing the field of geography to better understand global inequality. That incredibly wide range begins to make sense when you spend time in CED and come to understand the symbiotic relationship between the college and city that surrounds it.”
— Brandon Yung, BA Urban Studies, 2022
“I chose Berkeley for its reputation for design excellence and commitment to social justice, but what I came to value most was the supportive and collaborative studio culture.”
— Al Oliva (MArch 2024)
NEWS
Emmett Zeifman joins Department of Architecture
Sean Canty appointed assistant professor of architecture
Dorothée Imbert named chair of UC Berkeley’s Department of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning
Stephen J. Collier appointed chair of the Department of City & Regional Planning
Wallpaper* US400 | Eight CED alums shaping the creative landscape
“Coming Home”: Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu address CED graduating class of 2026
Daniel G. Chatman begins tenure as interim dean of the College of Environmental Design
Inside the “concrete battery”: CED researcher Stefano Schiavon exposes lethal heat in Florida prisons
Nicholas de Monchaux appointed dean of the College of Environmental Design
“Designers have to be optimists”: Dean Renee Chow charts a positive future for environmental design
EVENTS
Modernism: Born in California | Environmental Design Archives Exhibition
Yung Ho Chang: How a House in the Sky Landed on Earth? | Inaugural Stanley Saitowitz Alumni Lecture
Peter Norton: Learning from Experience — The Past and Future of Urban Mobility | City & Regional Planning Lecture
Ariel Bierbaum: Schools for Sale — Disinvestment, Dispossession, and the Promise of Reparative Planning in School Building Reuse | City & Regional Planning Lecture
Magdalena Ugarte: Rethinking the Normative — Settler State Planning, Indigenous Law, and Grounded Legal Pluralism | City & Regional Planning Lecture
Kimberly Garza & Erik Prince: Small Moves, Meaningful Change | Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning Lecture
Subhrajit Guhathakurta: Hurricanes, Flooding, and Displacement — AI-Accelerated Flood Risk Mapping and Human Relocation Dynamics | City & Regional Planning Lecture
Mona Fawaz: Planning Amid Division —The Politics of the”Public” in Beirut | City & Regional Planning Lecture
Casper Mork-Ulnes: The Craft of Place | Architecture Lecture
“Berkeley gave us a belief we have never lost — that architecture can change lives. That the spaces we make, the cities we shape, the boundaries we draw — they matter, deeply, to the people who live inside them. That belief was formed here, in these four years at Wurster Hall.”
— Rossana Hu (BA Architecture 1990) & Lyndon Neri (BA Architecture 1987), CED Commencement Address 2026