Bachelor of Arts in Landscape Architecture
As a landscape architecture major at UC Berkeley — the top-ranked public university in the nation for architecture and the built environment — you’ll experience both the breadth of a liberal arts education and the depth of a rigorous pre-professional design program. Our curriculum integrates multiple perspectives, encouraging you to design and study landscapes through the lenses of ecology, climate resilience, social impact, design process, aesthetic composition, and cultural meaning. You’ll graduate with a bachelor of arts degree that prepares you to enter the landscape architecture profession or continue on to graduate study.
About the Program
As an undergraduate in the College of Environmental Design, you’ll be part of a creative and intellectual community dedicated to a deep understanding of the world around us and shared belief in the power of design to improve lives and the built environment. Landscape Architecture is one of four undergraduate majors in the college, which are all deeply rooted in exploring and solving issues of social equity and climate resilience. The Department of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning focuses on these issues through the design of public landscapes and their integration with urban and natural systems.
UC Berkeley’s bachelor of arts in landscape architecture offers you a strong liberal arts foundation in environmental design, with disciplinary specific classes in landscape architectural design, visual representation, construction technologies, and the history, theory, and practices of the designed landscape. This rigorous, hands-on, studio-based program immerses you in methods of design, histories of place making, plant identification, ecology, hydrology, and materials. You’ll graduate with a BA in landscape architecture, equipped with pre-professional competency for entry-level employment in landscape architecture or graduate work in landscape architecture or a related environmental design field.
About the College of Environmental Design
The Department of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning, established at UC Berkeley in 1913, was one of the founding departments of the College of Environmental Design. When the college was created in 1959, it was the first in the nation to unite the disciplines of architecture, planning, and landscape architecture, leading the way toward an integrated approach to analyzing, understanding, and designing our built environment.
The college emphasizes environmental design as a profoundly ethical practice, inseparable from social, political, economic, and cultural contexts. We’re committed to building an inclusive environment for our faculty, students and staff that respects and reflects the communities in which we live and work.
CED Ambassadors
CED’s admissions ambassadors are happy to help you learn more via:
- Virtual Presentations
- One-on-one conversations
- Webinars, phone calls, email exchanges
- Student panel discussions about the student experience at CED
How to Apply
Applications to the College of Environmental Design are made through UC Berkeley’s Office of Undergraduate Admissions. Applications are available beginning August 1 and may be submitted beginning October 1. The final deadline to submit your application is November 30. Other important deadlines are available here. A portfolio is not required for admission to CED.