What is Environmental Design?

Environmental design addresses the impact of the built environment on individuals and the natural world and creates a wide range of interventions informed by human and environmental systems.

Environmental design comprises architects, planners, landscape architects, interior designers, preservationists, building technology specialists, and researchers from a wide range of disciplines. Their shared body of knowledge and professional skills affect communities, landscapes, buildings, products, and the individuals who occupy and use them.

Why Design?

In today’s world, individuals must tackle complex and often poorly understood challenges to living healthy and sustainable lives. Design helps people understand and find solutions to these problems through a process that involves multiple components: define the problem, envision the outcome, outline an approach, conduct research, and enlist the proper participants.

Participants in the design process engage multiple variables that often cannot be isolated and may be only partly understood. In such real-world situations, the design process provides alternative scenarios to address problems and basic needs.

The National Academy of Environmental Design serves the public by connecting the knowledge and skills of a range of disciplines to develop practical solutions to problems society faces today and in the future.

ABOUT THE NAED

HIGHLIGHTS

WORKSHOPS + SYMPOSIA