Skip to main content

Yale to Offer Green Building Design and Development Program

A new advanced degree program that puts a green spin on architectural design will be offered at Yale University next fall.

A new advanced degree program that puts a green spin on architectural design will be offered at Yale University next fall.

"Few universities are in a position to do this better than Yale," said Robert A.M. Stern, dean of the Yale School of Architecture. “The long leadership traditions of the schools of Architecture and Forestry & Environmental Studies, with the unmatched potential offered by their combined intellectual expertise and physical facilities, uniquely position these schools, thus Yale, to establish a singularly innovative and relevant academic program in sustainable, restorative environmental design.”

The four-year joint degree program will focus on sustainable and restorative environmental design, which seeks to minimize adverse effects on the natural environment and human health and enhance the beneficial contact between people and nature in buildings.

“Much of current design and development, especially in urban areas, has fostered environmental degradation, excessive waste, pollution and unsustainable resource use, while at the same time separating, if not alienating, people from the natural environment,” said Stephen Kellert, the Tweedy Ordway Professor of Social Ecology at the environment school.

Students in the 126-credit program will take 90 course credits at the architecture school and 36 credits at the environment school, and upon graduation will receive master's degrees in architecture and environmental management.

“Schools of the environment are recognizing that they must also strive to be schools of sustainable development, and schools of architecture are recognizing that they need to address the biological and biophilic dimension of sustainable design,” said Kellert. “Consequently, students of the environment and of architecture are increasingly seeking to integrate and combine the knowledge and skills of these currently separate and independent disciplines, so that they may someday shape built environments that will sustain people and the planet.”

More on this topic