Research + Design
The College of Environmental Design (CED) is one of the world’s most distinguished laboratories for experimentation, research, and intellectual synergy. Our research centers and academic departments pioneered an integrated approach to analyzing, understanding, and designing our built environment that continues to this day.
CED's mission is to provide leadership to address the world's most pressing environmental challenges. We tackle issues from multiple perspectives and across disciplines — architecture, city and regional planning, landscape architecture and environmental planning, urban design, and real estate development and design —always with the understanding that environmental design is inseparable from society, culture, politics, and economics. Our faculty and students view environmental design as an exploratory spatial practice, aimed at creating forms of building, landscape, and urban plans that have yet to be imagined. At the same time, we believe that environmental design must be a profoundly ethical practice, coproduced through dynamic engagements with diverse communities and policy-makers.
Our design and research practices are centered on four main themes: climate solutions, equity and social justice, technology and material innovations, and design excellence.
