We conceive and describe appropriate built spaces at different scales, learn processes to bring buildings into place, and understand the consequences these have for inhabitants, society, and the environment.

Since the 1890s, when a building and financial boom brought a new group of mostly eastern architects into the area, the San Francisco Bay Area has been a center for innovative and influential architecture and environmental design. UC Berkeley has been at the heart of this creativity since Bernard Maybeck began instruction in architecture in 1894, training architects, hiring them to teach or design its buildings, or inviting them for lectures, critiques and exhibitions.

When President Benjamin Ide Wheeler formally established the Department of Architecture in 1903, he appointed John Galen Howard to be its head and the first Professor of Architecture.   More detail...