The global reference for architecture

Walking into an electrical store can be intimidating. At first glance, all the lights are on, and the thousands of chandeliers and lamps are blinding. When you walk toward the shelves, you see dozens of options, shapes, colors, prices, and uses. On each package, informational tables display numbers that can seem confusing at first. Lumens, color temperature, wattage—there are many unfamiliar terms. Before defaulting to the cheapest option, only to find that it creates an uncomfortable or poorly balanced atmosphere, understanding a few key concepts can make a significant difference.

Lighting design plays a fundamental role in shaping how spaces are perceived and used, influencing comfort, atmosphere, and even productivity. Poorly designed lighting, on the other hand, can compromise these qualities. Rather than approaching lighting as a purely technical decision, it can be understood as an integral part of architectural design. To help clarify these choices, the following overview introduces the most common types of light sources and key concepts associated with them.

Modernism is often encountered through built form, photographed facades, canonical plans, concrete manifestos. For most people, its first encounter was far more immediate. It was a chair in an office, a shelf in a living room, a compact unit that reorganized how one sat, stored, or slept. Long before modern architecture could be widely commissioned, it was furniture that entered everyday space, carrying with it a new logic of living. Modernism's promise of transforming life was often delivered through these smaller, repeatable objects.

To understand this shift, furniture has to be read as a condensed form of architecture rather than decoration. Early twentieth-century designers treated it precisely this way. Le Corbusier described furniture as équipement de l'habitation (equipment of living), placing it within the operational system of the building rather than outside it. Similarly, the Bauhaus approached chairs and tables as industrial prototypes, embedding principles of standardization, efficiency, and mass production into their design. As architectural historian Beatriz Colomina has argued, modern architecture did not circulate only through buildings, but through media and objects that translated its ideas into everyday life. Furniture became architecture in miniature: portable, reproducible, and capable of reorganizing space without reconstructing it.

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Today, interdisciplinary learning and exchange are more important than ever in addressing increasingly complex environmental, social, and urban challenges.

Each summer, the University of California, Berkeley's College of Environmental Design (CED) becomes an intensive laboratory for architectural, landscape, and urban exploration. Through two complementary programs—Design + Innovation for Sustainable Cities (DISC) and the Summer Institutes—Berkeley offers an immersive curriculum grounded in disciplinary rigor, intentional exchange, and a shared institutional culture. Together, these programs reflect CED's long-standing multidisciplinary structure, with architecture, landscape architecture, city planning, and urban design thriving and collaborating under one roof.

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