UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design

Save the date! 🎓 CED Commencement is Tuesday, May 19, at 9 a.m. at the Greek Theatre. We’re looking forward to celebrating the class of 2026! All graduates receive two complimentary tickets; additional tickets may be purchased from Cal Performances. Graduating students will receive more info about registering, renting regalia, and purchasing extra tickets via email in the coming weeks.

We’re the No. 1 Public University in the U.S. for Architecture + Built Environment! 💛💙 QS World University Rankings has once again named UC Berkeley as the top public university in the nation for studying architecture and the built environment. This isn’t just about the prestige, it’s about a "longtime dedication to empowering our students to be change-makers,” says William W. Wurster Dean Renee Y. Chow. “When our students graduate, they are prepared to design solutions to the myriad environmental challenges we face, be leaders in their professions, and serve their communities through practice and public service.” #UCBerkeley #ArchitectureSchool #BuiltEnvironment #QSWorldRankings #CollegeOfEnvironmentalDesign

Looking back at last week’s spring final reviews. Congrats to all our students on completing another semester! Images: 1: CP 208 – Collaborative Plan Preparation Studio, Instructor: Jane Lin 2, 3: LA 200B – Case Studies in Landscape Design, Instructor: Du Solier @hooddesignstudio LA 202 – Designs of Landscape Sites, Instructors: Rivera @danielle.z.rivera , Domlesky LA 204 – Advanced Project Design, Instructor: Meyer @meyerstudiola 4, 5: ARCH 204B – Thesis Studio, Instructors: Anderson @andersonandersonarchitecture , Davids, Gutierrez, Jaehning @davidjaehningarchitect ARCH 100D – Architectural Design IV, Instructors: Miley, Riley 6: RDEV 270 – Development + Design Studio, Instructors: Smidek, Kennerly ENV DES 253 – Thesis Studio, Instructors: Mozingo, Gaffney 7, 8: ARCH 100D – Architectural Design IV, Instructors: Atwood @first_office_architecture , Hu and Huang @neriandhu 9: ARCH 204B – Thesis Studio, Instructors: Anderson, Davids, Gutierrez, Jaehning

Announcing the CED 2026 Commencement student speakers! We look forward to hearing their inspiring words on May 19 at the Greek Theatre. Amy Bella Gonzalez, BA Landscape Architecture Amy is a first-generation Latina graduating with a degree in landscape architecture and business administration. Amy founded LBSA’s first consulting committee to help create more accessible opportunities for underrepresented minorities within the consulting industry. As financial director for Invention Corps, she helped raise over $15,000. Amy hopes to inspire others to pursue their passions fearlessly. Zeyu Lin, Master of Urban Design Zeyu's work examines how technological change reshapes cities, and how urban design can respond by centering social justice and human care. At UC Berkeley, he has worked across the Bay Area and beyond, engaging contexts from North Richmond’s community-based networks to Olympic legacy redevelopment in Los Angeles. With a background in landscape architecture, he approaches urban design as a way to reconnect systems, places, and people in everyday urban life. Yutong Li, Master of City Planning A lifelong student of cities, Yutong is interested in affordable housing development, transportation policy, and urban analytics. From Suzhou, China, she received a BS from New York University Shanghai in finance and urban studies. At CED, she deepened her understanding of how housing, mobility, finance, and community needs intersect. Post-MCP, she is committed to advancing sustainable and equitable community development. Nathan Shui, PhD in Architecture Nathan’s research explores the queer urban history of postsocialist China, focusing on how sexual minorities reappropriate state-led urban modernization to create spaces of their own. By tracing how queer Chinese identify and inhabit the loopholes, blind spots, and unintended counterproductivities within these state-led modernizing programs, he advances an alternative conception of queer spatial agency rooted in passivity, evasion, opacity, and impermanence illegible to Western liberal queer discourses.

As we get ready the graduate the class of 2026, we're taking a look back at the class of 1926. Harold Stump (1905–1996) AB Architecture, 1926 After graduating, Stump worked as a draftsman in the San Francisco architectural office of Kent & Haas and traveled to Europe to study the works of ancient and modern architects and painters. He joined the architecture faculty at UC Berkeley in 1942, retiring in 1972 as a full professor. His teaching was informed by his ongoing research into the interrelation of painting, sculpture, and building. In 2016, Stump’s student Lester Wertheimer (MArch 1952) established a travel fellowship for architecture students in his honor. Esther Baum Born (1902-1987) Master of Architecture, 1926 After receiving her undergraduate and graduate degrees in architecture from UC Berkeley, Born practiced architecture in New York with her husband, fellow UC Berkeley architecture graduate Ernest Born. While in New York, she studied photography, which became her life’s work. Inspired by her friendship with artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, she spent 10 months in Mexico photographing and drawing the regional architecture and design. This resulted in the monograph “The New Architecture in Mexico,” published by Wm. Morrow & Co. (New York, 1937). The Borns returned to San Francisco, where Born ran her husband’s architectural office and to worked as a photographer. Geraldine Knight Scott (1904–1989) BS Landscape Architecture, 1926 After Geraldine Knight Scott received her degree in landscape architecture from the College of Agriculture and spent two years in Europe studying gardens in Italy, France, and Spain. Scott established her own private landscape architecture practice in Berkeley, which she ran from 1948 to 1968, and in 1952 began teaching in the Department of Landscape Architecture. When Blake Garden was gifted to the department in 1962, Scott took on its management and developed the site into an important field education resource. Scott established a travel fellowship for landscape architecture students, so that they could experience the expression of culture and the sense of place that she discovered on her travels.

Thinking of majoring in architecture? Experience a day in the life of a UC Berkeley architecture student! 📐 From early mornings, to studio pin-ups, to late nights making models — there's nothing quite like the CED community. #UCBerkeleyArchitecture #ArchitectureMajor #DayInTheLife

“Since I was 3, dance has been a constant in my life. I was raised in an Indigenous Oaxacan household in LA’s Echo Park. My parents enrolled me in a nearby Early Head Start program, and next door, an elementary school partnered with a local nonprofit to offer dance classes for lower-income children. It was there that I was first introduced to dance, not knowing it would later connect me with my culture. I attended a predominantly Hispanic high school that offered ballet folklórico as part of its curriculum. It’s a stylized form of traditional Mexican dance that blends regional folk culture with the technical elements of ballet and contemporary stage performance. Learning it was both challenging and comforting; it felt different than any other style I knew. Yet it was familiar and freeing because it connected me to my Mexican roots. Through it, I learned about parts of Mexico I had never even heard of, telling a story through the costume designs, music and skirt movements.  Coming to UC Berkeley, I was nervous about whether I would find a sense of community. But I came across @oaxa_cal , a grassroots organization for Oaxacan-identifying students, and joined during my first semester. Then I joined @reflejosdeucb , a group that teaches and performs traditional Mexican folklorico dances across the East Bay Area. Finding both my Oaxacan community and a folklórico group at Berkeley makes the campus feel more like home. My family has always been proud of my performances. These dances aren’t just for me — they’re also for my parents, who have given me so much. I carry a lot of pride in being able to continue both my education and folklórico at Berkeley. Now I’m a second-year architecture student, and I hope to one day give back to my Los Angeles community by designing public spaces for families in lower-income neighborhoods. Spaces where others can feel safe and connected, like the ones I had throughout my childhood. At Berkeley, my community is a family. When school feels overwhelming, they remind me that I belong here. Berkeley has given Oaxacan students a space to celebrate our identities.” — Tania Lopez (Architecture, ‘28)

in conversation… by TRACE showcases two years of interviews between UC Berkeley CED faculty and TRACE editors. The full pieces are included in TRACE issues two & four and discuss utopian design, history and theory, the dialogues between disciplines, design communication, and the role of digital technologies in the disciplines studied in CED. These conversations are part of TRACE’s larger commitment to breaking down the barriers between the four CED majors architecture, landscape architecture, urban studies, and sustainable environmental design. Additionally, they help students learn and hear from their instructors in a different context, showing a more intimate perspective than often experienced in studio or lecture. Exhibition on view 4/23 - 5/1 | Bauer Wurster Elevator Lobby Featuring conversations with: 0309 Thomas Oommen 0310 Zachary Lamb 0311 Neyran Turan 0312 Robert Christopher Glass 0313 Ryan Keerns 0314 Andrew Shanken 0411 Yasmin Vobis 0412 Xin Zhou 0413 Kyle Steinfeld 0414 Juana Canet & Ginés Garrido 0415 Maryam Hosseini Editors (2024–2025): Leo Tianju Zhang, Mariam Zaidan, Connor Nash Dunbar, Rae Wymer, Willy Yiu Tang, Jiashu Jiang, Farrah Chan, Celine Anna Chang, Marissa Dzio Graphic Editors (2024–2025): Chloe Wang, Tiffany Li, Quinn Nguyen, Jason Yu, Ian Chu, Naomi Lucia Manuel, Molly Ao, Joyce H Kwon, Hailey Law, Emily Reylorn Telles, Lisa Zheng Exhibition curated by Ian Chu and Rae Wymer. This was made possible with support from William W. Wurster Dean Renee Chow and the UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design. Thank you.

Congratulations to the 2026 CED Distinguished Alumni Award winners! The awardees will be honored at our commencement ceremony on May 19. Alma Du Solier (MLA 1999) Studio Director and Partner, Hood Design Studio Gregg W. Perloff (MCP 1976) Co-Founder and CEO, Another Planet Entertainment Lyndon Neri, Hon. FAIA (BA ARCHITECTURE 1987) Founding Partner, Neri&Hu Design and Research Office Rossana Hu, Hon. FAIA (BA ARCHITECTURE 1990) Founding Partner, Neri&Hu Design and Research Office Miller Professor and Chair, Department of Architecture, University of Pennsylvania #CalCommencement2026

Walter Hood, professor emeritus of landscape architecture & environmental planning, has been named to the TIME100, Time Magazine’s annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. In her tribute, landscape architect Kate Orff writes, “Whether he’s riffing off of the intertwined practices of landscape architecture, sculpture, and cultural anthropology, or crafting community parks in his native Oakland, Calif., his work allows us all to take part in a wider civic conversation. Walter has an almost kaleidoscopic power to ground us where we are, by propelling us into the past and simultaneously toward a more just future that is slowly coming into focus.” Congratulations, Walter! The TIME100 recognizes individuals whose work is shaping culture, advancing critical conversations, and redefining the future. Read more and see the full list: /collection/100-most-influential-people/2026/walter-hood/ #Time100 #WalterHood Photo: Alex Welsh, New York Times/Redux. @hooddesignstudio

Andrew Atwood, Associate Professor of Architecture, shares an early take on LACMA’s new David Geffen Galleries with The Architect's Newspaper: “I like it. Of course I like how it looks, which should not surprise anyone who knows me, but more importantly, I like how I have experienced it, mostly during construction and from my car. Driving west on Wilshire, the street rises and the building sits at eye level. Then the street drops, and you realize you are about to drive under it. That sequence is distinctly Los Angeles in the most straightforward and unromantic way. Many people have famously written about Los Angeles architecture and cars, but I have always found much of that to be too abstract, too contrived. Here it is just literal. You drive at it. You drive under it. You drive through it. Most people will see the building from the street and from their cars, not from inside the museum or the LACMA campus. Even for that reason alone, I will always like it.” Read more on AN’s website: /2026/04/architects-critics-educators-early-takes-lacma/ Photo: LACMA hovers over Wilshire Boulevard, by Iwan Baan. @archpaper @first_office_architecture

In a webinar earlier this semester sponsored by Berkeley City Council Member Brent Blackaby (@councilmemberblackaby ) Master of Landscape Architecture students (@berkeleylaep_students ) in Professor Kristina Hill’s (@drkzhill ) studio presented fire-safe garden designs to residents of the Berkeley Hills, highlighting key strategies for adapting to new zone-zero regulations without sacrificing aesthetic appeal. Several themes emerged, including rethinking outdoor spaces as rooms, replacing foundation plantings with planted islands, and using boulders, river rocks, colored gravel, tile, or other non-combustable materials for visual interest. More than 100 residents attended the one-and-a-half-hour webinar, and another 100 registered to receive the recording. Blackaby thanked the students for inspiring his constituents to think creatively about how to harden their homes: “This has been a wonderful opportunity to explore zone zero designs that are fire-safe and beautiful,” he remarked. “There are many different paths for people to take.” Read more on our website. Images: 1, 4 – Kevin Camacho 2 – Yuchen Xiong 3 – Peak Bamroongsuk 5 – Sanjana Roy 6 – Jiatong Cui #ZoneZero #FireSafety #DefensibleSpace #LandscapeArchitecture #UCBerkeley