26 August 2014
175 students from around the globe joined CED faculty, graduate student instructors and leading practitioners in architecture, landscape design and sustainable city planning for CED's summer program offerings.
embARC Summer Design Academy guided high school students through a portfolio-enhancing architecture, planning and Design:Build studio. Each student had the unique opportunity to develop and propose sustainable planning initiatives, and present their ideas to actual City of Berkeley planners. A set of design-conscious and humane chicken coops the students built in Wurster's Fabrication Shop were donated and installed at Spiral Gardens, a Southwest Berkeley non-profit food justice organization. Each component of the program was designed to give the students a clearer sense of what their future might look like in the field of environmental design as an area of study and as a profession.
Current undergraduate students from a wide range of disciplines took part in the inaugural DISC (Design + Innovation for Sustainable Cities) program, which exposed them to the most current schools of thought around global urban environments, their challenges, and the potential of design and innovation as catalysts for change. Students had mentored access to digital and analog fabrication technologies and visualization software, and engaged with UC Berkeley faculty in lectures and critiques. The group ventured out into the field to research and develop user-centered products and interventions that affected environmental change, even jumping into kayaks for an immersive tour of the San Francisco waterfront and Mission Bay areas. The DISC program was able to tap into the Bay Area's powerful network of thought leaders and design innovators to include students in the conversations around sustainable urban design.
Participants in the Summer [IN]STITUTE brought a vast array of professional and academic backgrounds to their experience at CED, and were able to connect with like-minded colleagues in one of the [IN]ARCH, [IN]ARCH ADVANCED,[IN]CITY or [IN]LAND cohorts. A primary focus of the [IN]STITUTE is to give participants an insight into the unique studio culture of a graduate program in environmental design. During an intensive six weeks, the program was packed with lectures from academics and professionals at the top of their fields; site-specific excursions and interventions into the landscape; walking tours through Bay Area landmarks and close studies of urban networks and systems; immersive training in analog and digital visualization techniques, rigorous critiques and an introduction to the iterative design process; and many late nights in the studio.
Makers at every life stage availed themselves of the opportunity to study methods of wood and metalworking under the guidance of expert artisans through CED's Summer Fabrication Workshops, held in Wurster's Fabrication Shop. Participants in the various workshops were able to take home a maple table or bench, a pair of rings, metal or wood stools, and other one-of-a-kind objects, and also gained a deeper understanding of the materials and a confidence with the equipment used in its making.
Applications for CED's 2015 Summer Programs open in mid-December 2014, and registration for the Summer Fabrication Workshops begins in early spring 2015.