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About
The Department
Even before Wurster Hall was completed in 1964, - the professional
programs in the new College of Environmental Design were under significant
intellectual pressure to address a host of issues related to the
social and economic dynamics of the post World War II decades. The
consequences of rapid urban development and its impacts on the Bay
Area's natural setting mobilized faculty and students to challenge
the status quo and prepare for professional careers where individuals
could contribute to the new emerging public landscape of the San
Francisco Bay Area. This challenge led to well known confrontations:
Virtually all cities lining the San Francisco Bay were in the process
of extending the land area beyond their natural shorelines into
the Bay. Freeway construction brutally cut through neighborhoods
and traffic had started to spill onto residential streets that were
not designed to carry that much traffic. A disenchantment with urban
renewal had set in. Little had been done to improve the inner city
or to eliminate poverty. At the urban fringes, for every model community,
dozens of dreary tracts and half-cities had been built.
The context of the environmental issues of the 1960's shaped the
Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning.
These were the formative years, and the 1964 move to Wurster Hall
coincided with the formation of the Department's new identity. Faculty
and students integrated the art of creating landscapes with knowledge
of the natural sciences and with knowledge of the values that people
associate with landscapes. By the early seventies interdisciplinary
programs in Environmental Planning and Urban Design emerged as distinct
sub-fields of the profession. Also, a doctoral program in Environmental
Design started to take in students interested in teaching careers
and research.
The term "Environment" was - and is - understood broadly. It included
a concern for ecology, land, water and air, but just as importantly,
for the design of places in cities that are artful and uplifting,
for the dynamics of social groups in neighborhoods and for rules
that guided the encroachment of second homes on habitats and the
scenic beauty of places in nature, such as Lake Tahoe.
The pride of our program is the integrated approach to Landscape
Architecture and Environmental Planning exemplified in the design
studio Ecological Factors in Urban Landscape Design, an educational
experience that brings together graduate students and faculty from
different backgrounds. Recently a Theory of Landscape Architecture
and Environmental Planning course was reinstated as part of the
common core. This core also includes courses that allow for breadth
and specialization in the representation of landscapes, the science
of geographic information systems, history, construction technology,
river restoration, urban forestry and computer visualization.
The Department is aided in its educational mission by several important
endowments. Former faculty member, Geraldine Knight Scott (1904
- 1989) endowed a travel stipend that is awarded every year to both
graduate and undergraduate students and allows our students to visit
important landscapes in the world, as well as providing graduate
fellowship monies for incoming students interested in the history
of the American landscape in memory of her husband, the late Bay
Area historian, Mel Scott. Beatrix Farrand (1896 - 1959) endowed
the Department with a substantial gift that included her Reef Point
Library and an endowment that has helped finance faculty and student
research, the CED archives and a generous allowance for the CED
library. The Farrand endowment also sponsored conferences- the last
on the role of Women in Landscape Architecture (2002), and allows
the department to bring a distinguished visitor to Berkeley for
a semester every year.
The recent move back to Wurster Hall after its seismic retrofit
reestablished the department in a much-improved space that combines
all studio classes into one floor surrounded by a light well that
extends to the level below and makes students see and be seen by
the larger community from the CED library. Renewal is an essential
dynamic in academia. Two new faculty members joined the Department.
Assistant Professor Jennifer Brooke came in 2002 and strengthened
the landscape design instruction after starting her professional
career in two of the most prominent design firms in the country.
Assistant Professor Judith Stilgenbauer arrived Fall 2004 semester
from Munich, Germany. where she directed the design of the large
state sponsored Landscape Exhibition. She will bring to the classroom
the art and science of plant design.
On the Berkeley campus instruction in Landscape Architecture started
in 1913 in a small division within the Department of Forestry in
the College of Agriculture. It evolved to a Department of the highest
reputations among its national and international peers.
In the spring of 2003 the department graduated its 90th class. To
a large extend the Department's reputation is built on the ability
to respond to the dynamics of a metropolitan region that has been
its laboratory. The rapidly changing pace of the San Francisco Bay
area has forced students and faculty to be critical, to integrate
knowledge with art in order to stay relevant.
Peter C. Bosselmann
Professor and Chair
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