Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Design

University at Buffalo - SUNY

Look around you. From the building you live in to the bike path you take to school or work to the farmer’s market you visit to buy healthy food, the built environment touches every aspect of your life.It is also closely tied to some of the most complex problems facing cities today, from climate change and community health to public safety and housing affordability.If you’re interested in how the world around you takes shape-and you want to help communities create places that are not only beautiful, but also sustainable, healthy and equitable for generations to come-then environmental design could be the field for you.What will I learn?As an environmental design major, you’ll study what people need (and want) in a community. You’ll explore design in relationship to the natural world and the social and political systems of our society and how these factors affect what gets built, where and how. And you’ll work across scales-from buildings to neighborhoods to regions-to create designs and plans that improve the places in which people live, work and play. Here at UB, we prepare community-minded designers and planners with skills in policy analysis, geographic information systems, architectural design and environmental law. You’ll jump right into our spirited community of makers and doers with hands-on work, from the classroom to the city and world around us.

School of Architecture and Planning