
The University of California, Berkeley is public land-grant university founded in 1868. Architectural drawing was taught as early as the 1890s but a formal Department of Architecture was inaugurated in 1903. Based on the Beaux Arts educational model, the Department turned towards a progressive, Modernist, curriculum from the 1940s, with Erich Mendelsohn teaching there from 1941-1953. In 1959 a major re-organisation took place and the College of Environmental Design was formed, bringing together the Department of Architecture, the Department of City Planning (established 1948), the Department of Decorative Arts and the School of Landscape Architecture (established 1913).