The Environmental Design Department of Parsons School of Design grew out of the Interior Design Department, covering the disciplines of interior design, urban design, and product design. Under the chairmanship of Allen Tate, which began in 1970, the department focused on the study of "man's psychological, physical and aesthetic needs as they apply to the spaces in which he lives and works," according to contemporary catalog copy.

The Union Square Project was a 4-credit studio course open to third (final) year students and underwritten by a local department store, Klein's, whose now demolished flagship store bordered on Union Square Park. The course description in the 1972-1973 Parsons School of Design catalog begins, "This studio will study a community problem: the clarification of the 14th Street/Union Square subway complex and its above ground connections." 14th Street/Union Square is a transit hub with intersecting underground subway lines and above ground bus lines traveling along a major thoroughfare with numerous retail establishments. In addition to Klein's, other stakeholders included the Metropolitan Transit Authority, the McCrory Corporation, the 14th Street Association, and the Institute of Architecture and Urban Studies. The New School for Social Research's Center for New York City Affairs also supported the project.

The Southern Boulevard Redevelopment Area Environmental Project was offered during the Fall and Spring 1974-1975 semesters. The 1974-1975 course catalog describes the elective, open to second and third year students, as a United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW, now Department of Health and Human Services) financed project to "design an open space environment that includes a Greenhouse/Environmental Education Center." This project was based in the Hunt's Point neighborhood of the southern Bronx, an area that was economically devastated during the 1960s and 1970s. Southern Boulevard is a major thoroughfare.

Jean McClintock Gardner, the teacher of both these classes, is an activist, writer, teacher, and consultant on sustainable design issues. She began teaching in the Department of Interior Design at Parsons School of Design in 1968 and has taught at the school over almost all of the intervening years. In 2018, she is an associate professor of social-ecological history and design in the School of Constructed Environments. Gardner is author of Urban Wilderness: Nature In New York City (1988) and co-author, with Brian McGrath, of Cinemetrics: Architectural Drawing Today (2007).

Gardner received an AIA Committee on the Environment Award for her teaching and a special citation from the New York City Chapter of the AIA for her work as an urban ecologist, author, and educator in both the architectural field and in the public realm. Gardner was part of a team led by David Rockwell to commemorate 9/11. The group exhibited their project, "The Hall of Risk," a participatory center for conflict resolution, at the 2002 Venice Biennale. Gardner's current research focuses on design pedagogy and its relationship to the creation of present ecological problems, such as climate change. She has served on the jury of the Buckminster Fuller Challenge, as well as organizing a conference on Water and Hydro-Fracking with the Baum Forum.