Gail Brager, Ph.D.
Professor and Interim Chair

Fall 2009

“Never waste a good crisis” seems to be the political mantra of our time. We face enormous economic, environmental, and social challenges, both locally and globally. Yet these challenges provide our department with a unique opportunity to re-examine, re-invigorate, and re-define who we are and how we can make crucial contributions to our discipline and community.

As part of the College of Environmental Design, the Department of Architecture was founded on strong principles of multidisciplinary collaboration and respect for experimentation, rooted in social, cultural, and environmental values. This has always been reflected in our innovative teaching, scholarly research, critical design inquiry, and synthetic practice. Fifty years later, these principles remain a strong underpinning of our school, while supporting our continual exploration of emerging theory and knowledge in design thinking, innovative materials and technologies, digital design and fabrication, and sustainability. And these fundamental principles and values have never been more relevant. They are precisely what are needed most in our discipline today, and in our world at large, to help us tackle the complex challenges we face in profound and meaningful ways.

Our world-class, award-winning faculty bring both broad and deep intellectual diversity to our educational community. Our undergraduate and graduate programs, as well as our faculty’s research endeavors, cover fields of design and design theory, history of architecture and urbanism, building science and sustainability, structures and construction, social and cultural processes, environmental design in developing countries, digital design and virtual environments, urban design, and visual studies. Rather than embrace a single conception of architecture, by intention, we welcome and value distinct views that broaden each of our own horizons through respectful debate. We are interested in the entire life cycle of the building process, from conceptualization, through design and representation, craft and construction, and the performance of both constructed and virtual environments.

We teach students to imagine, question, experiment, innovate, build, and reflect. Our curriculum is designed to foster independent thinking and to give students a balance of foundational knowledge and skills, with flexibility to follow their passions. We offer a variety of degrees to meet students’ various educational and career goals, preparing them to be leaders in architectural practice, research, or related fields in the building industry and environmental design.

At the undergraduate level, we offer a four-year program leading to the Bachelor of Arts degree with a major in architecture. This program offers both a liberal arts oriented and pre-professional education. We also offer several undergraduate minor programs that are available to all majors at UC Berkeley, including minors in sustainable design, social and cultural factors, history of the built environment, and environmental design and urbanism in developing countries. At the graduate level, we offer a Master of Architecture (a professional degree requiring one, two, or three years, depending on the student’s incoming background), a Master of Arts in design (advanced independent work in visual studies), and both a Master of Science and a Ph.D. in architecture (both research-based degrees focused in one of our major fields of study).

We are excited about the Fall 2009 semester. First, we are delighted to have our new dean, Jennifer Wolch, at the helm. She brings vision, enthusiasm, and insatiable curiosity and energy to the position, and we look forward to her leadership. We extend a warm and enthusiastic welcome to the two newest members of our faculty: Professor Margaret Crawford (from Harvard University), and Associate Professor Greg Castillo (from the University of Sydney). They are bringing new vigor to our architectural history program, while both being keenly interested in building bridges across the diverse areas in our department. We also welcome two distinguished visitors who will be teaching this fall. Fred Schwartz is our Esherick Visiting Professor. He is an architect and planner from New York with particular expertise in affordable, sustainable housing, and has also been deeply involved with re-designing post-Katrina New Orleans, as well as post-9/11 planning in New York. Stephen Cassell is our Friedman Visiting Professor. In addition to his numerous award-winning projects, he also has a grant to study the relationship between computer-aided design and craft, and is a member of New York City’s Green Code Task Force Technical Committee for Climate Adaptation.

This fall, we will also be interviewing candidates for a new senior faculty position, who will also serve as the next department chair. Those interviews will take place in late September and early October, and announcements of the interview schedules will be forthcoming on the website.

And last but not least, this year we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the college with a series of speakers and other events to pay tribute to CED’s history and legacy, as well as engage our community in discussion about the issues we care deeply about, and to reflect on our future directions.

We look forward to a busy and productive year of continued excellence!