The following list shows currently offered courses for spring 2020. For more information, see the UC Berkeley Online Schedule of Classes.
Please note: this list will be amended as the schedule develops.
ENVDES 1 [Staff]
Introduction to Environmental Design
Format: 3 hours of lecture and 2 hours of discussion per week
Description: This course provides an introduction to design, 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 make 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. The course is open to all undergraduate students.
ENVDES R3B [Staff]
Reading and Composition in Energy, Society, and Environmental Design
Format: 3 hours of lecture per week
Description: 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.
ENVDES 4B [Staff]
Global Cities
Format: 3 hours of lecture per week
Description: 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.
ENVDES 4C [Staff]
Future Ecologies: Urban Design, Climate Adaptation, and Thermodynamics
Format: 3 hours of lecture per week
Description: 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.
ENVDES 101A [Lifchez]
Writing about Environmental Design: Short Compositions
Format: 1.5 hours of seminar and 1.5 hours of tutorial per week
Description: In this class, writers develop a single narrative prompted by weekly assignments and readings (principally short stories) that parallel the focus of the week's writing assignment. Prompts and readings encourage the individual development of a personal style of creative writing. This course is approved for English department credit and the UC Undergraduate Minor in Creative Writing.
ENVDES 106 [Cesal]
Sustainable Environmental Design Workshop
Format: 4 hours of lecture per week
Description: 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.
ENVDES 109 SEC 001 / AMERSTD 102 SEC 003 [Castillo/Saul]
East Bay Revolution: Urban Spaces of Protest and Counterculture Practice
Format: 4 hours of seminar per week
Description: This class delves into the history of the East Bay in the 1960s and 1970s, with particular attention to the emergence of countercultural and social-movement communities. In this project-oriented class, students will work in teams as they reconstruct and analyze particular sites of protest and culture-making across the East Bay, from Berkeley to Emeryville and Oakland. Students will develop their own multi-media digital history projects, which will add significant new dimensions to the platform (The Berkeley Revolution) built by previous Cal undergraduates.
Fulfills the studio requirement for the Undergraduate Certificate in Global Urban Humanities. Priority enrollment to students pursuing the Certificate.
ENVDES 252 [Staff]
Thesis Research and Preparation
Format: 3 hours of seminar per week
Description: 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.