University of California, Berkeley

UC Berkeley’s Summer Institute in Environmental Design is an intensive six-week program for anyone on the fast track to launching an environmental design career – in architecture, landscape architecture, or urban planning. 

Each program includes a lecture series, a design or planning studio, media workshops, and site visits. By fulfilling the program requirements, students earn a certificate of completion and graded credit on an official UC Berkeley transcript. All classes are held in Bauer Wurster Hall, College of Environmental Design’s home on the UC Berkeley campus.

International students are welcome and encouraged to apply. No design experience is necessary. The program runs from July 7 to August 15, 2025.

Benefits of attending the Summer Institute

• Learn the fundamentals of environmental design
• Experience the culture of design and planning studios
• Craft a portfolio under the guidance of faculty mentors – for graduate school or job applications
• Meet students on similar career tracks and connect with practitioners in the field
• Earn college-level credit on an official UC Berkeley transcript

Summer Institute alumni have been accepted to graduate programs at Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Rice, University of Illinois, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, University of Washington, Yale, and at UC Berkeley.

Attend one of three cohorts

Berkeley’s Summer Institutes give participants from all academic backgrounds the opportunity to test their enthusiasm for the material and culture of environmental design. Summer Institute participants explore the methods and theories of the fields, experience the culture of design and planning studios, connect to top faculty and practitioners, and build a portfolio for graduate school application.

The Summer Institute in Environmental Design consists of three cohorts. Each participant will choose one of the following:

InARCH is an intensive program designed to immerse students in the foundational theories, philosophical principles and technical practices of architectural design. The program is structured as an introduction to studio culture and architectural discourse, and serves as a vehicle for further academic pursuits within the field.

InARCH teaches fundamentals of design, studio culture and architectural discourse with an emphasis on two linked but distinct components: studio instruction and media instruction. These are supplemented by a lecture series, field trips, readings and project reviews. The media component of the course provides historical/conceptual context for, and a practical knowledge of, various modes of representation. These techniques are both analog and digital, covering two and three-dimensional representational concerns through drawing, modeling and presentation/portfolio development. 

InCITY immerses students in city planning and urban design. By attending daily lectures and engaging in studio work, participants acquire the skills necessary to inform planning proposals. InCITY assignments are based on real projects with actual clients who represent a diverse group of stakeholder organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area. These organizations actively aim to influence sustainable planning policy at the local, county and regional levels.

InCITY students develop in-depth recommendations, analyses and proposals for these client projects, which run the gamut of planning practice: housing and design, bike mobility and transportation, public health and environmental justice, community development and gentrification, urban design, climate action and art in public spaces. In doing so, participants have an opportunity to influence planning in the Bay Area by exploring institutional, political, social, economic and environmental policy challenges.

InLAND is an immersive program in which students are introduced to the fundamentals of landscape architectural practice through the process of making and experimentation as research into site potentials. Initial ideas are developed and transformed through rigorous investigation in a collaborative studio environment. Students develop a landscape vocabulary that engages with the concepts of ecology, public space, sustainability and multiple scales of design.

Throughout the course, students learn to express a site in terms of its organizational and relational characteristics while investigating a range of potential conditions over time. Individually and collectively, students pursue inquiries that are agile and flexible, and experiment with various mediums to uncover hidden aspects of processes, spaces and materiality.