>Graduate

Presentation

Course Recognition

Assessed by CAPES with concept 4, for the period 2017-2020 and recognized by the approval of CNE/CES opinion No. 487/2018, through Ordinance No. 609 of the MEC, of 03/14/2019 published in the DOU. No. 52, of 03/18/2019, p. 7.

Awarded title: Master in Architecture

The Graduate Program in Architecture of the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PPGAr /PUC-Rio) was created in 2013 as a natural and necessary development of a series of activities and actions carried out at PUC-Rio, that have in common a commitment to critical reflection, research and excellence teaching of central themes related to architecture and urbanism.

The PPGArq/PUC-Rio is distinguished from other graduate programs in Rio de Janeiro by emphasizing the permanent search for balance between project theory and practice as its main guiding element.

The institutional identity of the PPGArq/PUC-Rio lies in its unmistakable conceptual specificity, defined not so much as an aprioristic corpus of ideas, of stable and self-sufficient domains, but as a field in which, precisely, the dichotomies between doing and thinking are suspended. In other words, the proposed conceptual modus operandi, its very philosophical basis, is the search for a field of transitivity between Theory and Project.

The convergence between theory and practice presupposes: (i) an openness to contemporary phenomena; (ii) a commitment to the definition of operational methods and conceptual instruments to deal with these phenomena. This broad but rigorous openness to contemporary praxis means, in practice, a great pre-disposition to interdisciplinary dialogue - a dialogue that should translate into the interest of architecture and city professionals for the research carried out at PPGArq/PUC-Rio.

The PPGArq/PUC-Rio results, in a large extent, from the maturity of PUC-Rio's undergraduate studies in Architecture and Urbanism, where various curricular and extracurricular activities (seminars, publications, colaborations, events, research) functioned as a kind of laboratory for the conceptual and philosophical definitions of the postgraduate project, especially with regard to the definitions of the Program’s Area of Concentration and Lines of Research.

The link between undergraduate and postgraduate studies is, in many ways, a PPGArq/PUC-Rio differential, since the Program will be linked to a course proposal that was based on the idea of integrated teaching, that is, related to the precept that, in the universe of teaching and research in architecture, theory and practice are and should be taken as complementary instances. In this sense, the PPGArq/PUC-Rio takes forward and deepens the idea that theoretical reflection must, by definition, maintain close contact with the practice of architecture and urbanism, and vice versa. It must therefore reproduce, on another level, the idea - determinant for the definition of the CAU/PUC-Rio "integrated workshops", where "drawing board" architects coexist with architects that are more related to the historiographic and theoretical reflections – that theory feeds on practice, as much as practice feeds on theoretical reflection.

The integration between the graduate and postgraduate programs is one of the main foundations of the PPGArq/PUC-Rio. In many ways, its implementation constitutes an opportunity to consolidate and strengthen a center of excellence regarding teaching, research and critical reflection on architecture and the city.


The PPGArq/PUC-Rio is also distinguished by its interdisciplinary perspective. This interdisciplinary perspective - which can be verified by the proposed curricular structure and is one of the most outstanding characteristics of the PPGArq/PUC-Rio - can be credited to both PUC-Rio’s academic environment and the interdepartmental structure of the undergraduate architecture course (Design, History, Civil Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Sociology, Geography, and Urban and Environmental Law, among others).

In addition, it is understood that the dilemmas and impasses of contemporaneity sustain the convergence of its two lines of research, putting in crisis imperfect specialties and dogmatic divisions, making it urgent to rethink both the conditions of possibility of the disciplinary fields and new methods of approach for new contemporary objects. Interdisciplinarity will then be that which operates not only in the internal spheres of the discipline of architecture (design, history, theory, criticism, technology, sustainability, environmental comfort, representation, construction), but also in the search for knowledge from the dialogue between several related areas, both in the sciences and human areas of knowledge.

The PPGArq/PUC-Rio aims at a rigorous, continuous and specific training in the field of Architecture. It is guided by a rigid methodological and theoretical foundation, the capacity for research and critical reflection on the conceptual and practical foundations that define architecture as a specific field of knowledge and doing, linked to the experience of built space, housing, sustainability of built space and life in cities. It seeks, in particular, to broaden the reflection on the activity and the notion of "Project" in the field of Architecture.