Bachelor of Arts in Sustainable Environmental Design
The sustainable environmental design major at UC Berkeley provides you with a critical understanding of the sustainability challenges facing regions in California and around the globe. You’ll be equipped with the technical and analytical tools that are key to solving sustainability problems that affect people, products, and places. The diverse tools and topics you will encounter as a sustainable environmental design major open many career paths and fields of graduate study.
About the Program
The emergent field of sustainability is growing rapidly across sectors, from product design and manufacturing to governance and social equity. As the world population grows and urbanizes, the planning and design of resilient, resource-efficient, healthy and socially just systems is profoundly important.
As a sustainable environmental design major, you’ll learn to:
- Understand the features and functions of systems that drive sustainability challenges.
- Analyze the relationships among technological systems, systems of governance, and production systems.
- Identify interactions among sustainability, equity and social justice.
- Use quantitative analysis to understand the potential of sensors and information dashboards to produce innovation in design and management approaches.
- Leverage the potential of strategy, policy, business and institutions to adapt to and influence environmental, social and economic trends.
Coursework in sustainable environmental design
Core classes designed exclusively for students majoring in sustainable environmental design:
- The Gateway Course (ENV DES 110) is taken by all incoming SED first years and transfer students. The course is an opportunity to meet your cohort and explore varying interpretations of sustainability through the fields of design, economics, policy, law, and advocacy.
- Design Frameworks (ENV DES 104 ) introduces you to various aspects and approaches of the design process as it relates to socioenvironmental aspects of sustainability. You’ll develop your skills to recognize and utilize design as both a thought process and set of communication tools and techniques. Topics of interest include understanding and representing life cycles, material flows, spatial articulations, system processes and intervention strategies aimed at regime shifts and large-scale spatiotemporal phenomena. Students will develop skills in representing complex topics and dynamics through approaches ranging from hand drawing to the use of specialized software.
- In the Capstone Workshop (ENV DES 106), you’ll build on your ability to synthesize your knowledge and skills, applying them to real-world challenges. Linking sustainability science and technology with urban form and social dynamics, the workshop requires independent and collaborative research towards an innovative capstone project.
As a SED major, you’ll also gain technical through coursework across the College of Environmental Design.
Courses stressing a technical orientation include:
- LD ARCH 188/GEOG C188 Geographic Information Systems. GIS has become a basic tool for a wide range of analytic tasks across all environmental design fields. The course addresses both GIS theory and applications, offering a dynamic analytical framework for gathering, integrating, interpreting and manipulating temporal and spatial data at various scales.
- LD ARCH 12, Environmental Science for Sustainable Development. This hands-on applied methods course introduces you to the scientific basis of sustainability as explored through the study of energy, water, food, natural resources, and the built environment. The course emphasizes hands-on learning through field-based exercises, such as measurement of atmospheric particulate matter, microclimates, channel form, aquatic insects and water quality, and direct observations of green infrastructure, green building methods, and urban agriculture.
- ARCH 140 Energy and Environment, a performance-oriented technology and design course, examines building technologies, design strategies, best practices and standards related to building materials and processes, and presents the fundamentals of building science while recognizing the evolving nature of building technologies, energy efficiency, ecology, and responsible design.
As a SED major, you will also engage in coursework geared towards understanding social systems and
design insights related to environmental justice and equity, including:
- LDARCH 140 Social and Psychological Factors in Open Space Design examines of the values and experiential dimensions of design. It considers ways that various processes and projects involving public space come to matter in the lives of individuals, communities, society.
- Urban sustainability-focused coursework, including CYPLAN 119 Planning for Sustainability, which examines how the concept of sustainable development applies to cities and urban regions and gives you insight into a variety of contemporary urban planning issues. The course combines lectures, discussions, student projects, and guest appearances by leading practitioners in Bay Area sustainability efforts.
NOTE: SED majors do not have access to architecture studio courses (ARCH 11A, 11B, 100A–D, 102A–B).
Architecture studio courses are reserved for architecture majors.
About the College of Environmental Design
The College of Environmental Design, founded 1959, 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.
EXPLORE CAREER PATHS in sustainable environmental design
Protecting the environment is an important goal for many organizations. A way to achieve this goal is to pursue sustainability, which is using resources to meet present needs without compromising future resources. Although sustainability most often is associated with environmental protection and conservation, it also has social and economic impacts. In fact, many companies adopt sustainability strategies to increase profits, and the environmental aspects become an added bonus.
Sustainability professionals help organizations achieve their goals by ensuring that their business practices are economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable. Sustainability is a diverse field that includes a wide variety of professionals. Sustainability professionals can be business managers, scientists, or engineers, or they can come from other backgrounds. Although their specific career paths might differ, sustainability professionals promote environmental protection, social responsibility, and profitability.
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.