The logomark of the CED's 50th Anniversary

 

 

This year, we mark the 50^th Anniversary of the establishment of the College of Environment and Design as a single academic unit (initially, the School of Environmental Design). Our celebrations embrace the earlier decades during which the instruction and practice of landscape architecture flourished at the University of Georgia.

Since 1928, when the first landscape architecture class was taught on our campus, our faculty, students and alumni have dedicated themselves to bringing life, creativity, and imagination to the spaces around us, shaping them into places we can’t forget. That the college came together as a unit in the late 1960s is not coincidental. The 60s birthed America’s most consequential 20^th-century civil and environmental movements.

In 1969, the year of CED’s foundation, Ian McHarg wrote his transformative “Design with Nature”; several of McHarg’s students came to Georgia. The same era gave us the National Historic Preservation Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the first celebration of Earth Day.

Then and now, CED’s faculty, students, and alumni are visionaries and trendsetters in shaping culturally meaningful and environmentally responsible places.

Then and now, we lead in planning, designing, and preserving the built and natural environments that make our lives possible.

At no point of history has the relationship between people and places, people and planet, been more fragile. As humanity and the Earth are facing crucial socio-economic and environmental challenges, the College of Environment and Design stands ready, as always, to offer solutions.

This website celebrates our legacy and anticipates our future. It is a part of a larger year-long anniversary project that includes the publication of a book and an exhibition, the development of branding materials, a series of high-profile guest lectures, and several celebratory events. Our faculty, staff, alumni and students invested countless hours in making this project happen and I am infinitely proud to be a member of the team.

 

Congratulations, CED! Onto the next 50 years!

Sonia Hirt
Dean and Hughes Professor of Landscape Architecture and Planning