Course Recognition
The PPGArq was evaluated by CAPES with a grade 4 for the quadrennium 2017-2020.
The Graduate Program in Architecture at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PPGArq/PUC-Rio) was created in 2013 as a natural and necessary development of a series of activities and actions carried out at PUC-Rio, which have as a common denominator the commitment to critical reflection, research, and the excellence in teaching of central themes related to architecture and urbanism.
PPGArq/PUC-Rio distinguishes itself from other graduate programs existing in Rio de Janeiro by making emphasis on the constant pursuit of balance between theory and practice of design its main guiding element.
The institutional identity of PPGArq/PUC-Rio lies in its unequivocal conceptual specificity, defined not so much as an a priori corpus of ideas, 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 philosophical basis itself, is the search for a field of transitivity between Theory and Design.
The convergence between theory and practice presupposes: (i) an openness to contemporary phenomena; (ii) a commitment to defining methods and operational conceptual instruments in dealing with these phenomena. This broad, yet rigorous openness to contemporary praxis means, in practice, a great predisposition to interdisciplinary dialogue – a dialogue that should translate into the interest of architecture and city professionals in the research carried out at PPGArq/PUC-Rio.
PPGArq/PUC-Rio results, to a large extent, from the maturation of experiences in the undergraduate program in Architecture and Urbanism at PUC-Rio, where various curricular and extracurricular activities (seminars, publications, agreements, events, research) have functioned as a kind of laboratory for the conceptual and philosophical definitions of the graduate project, especially with regard to the definitions of the Concentration Area and Research Lines of the Program.
The existing link between undergraduate and graduate education is, in many ways, a differential of PPGArq/PUC-Rio. This is because the Program will be linked to a course proposal that was based on the idea of integrated teaching, that is, on 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, PPGArq/PUC-Rio carries 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 should reproduce, therefore, at another level, the idea – determinant for the definition of the “integrated studios” of CAU/PUC-Rio, where “drafting board” architects coexist with those more connected to historiographical and theoretical reflection – that theoretical reflection is nourished by practice as much as practice is nourished by theoretical reflection.
The integration between undergraduate and graduate education is one of the main foundations of PPGArq/PUC-Rio. In many aspects, its implementation constitutes an opportunity for the consolidation and strengthening of a center of excellence in teaching, research, and critical reflection on architecture and the city.
PPGArq/PUC-Rio is also distinguished by its interdisciplinary perspective. Such an interdisciplinary perspective – which can be verified by the proposed curriculum structure and is one of the most prominent characteristics of PPGArq/PUC-Rio – can be credited both to the academic environment of PUC-Rio and to the interdepartmental structure of the university’s architecture undergraduate course, which has favored the realization of many integrated research activities and coordinated actions with several other courses (Design, History, Civil Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Sociology, Geography, Urban and Environmental Law, among others).
Furthermore, it is understood that the dilemmas and impasses of contemporaneity, underpin the convergence of its two research lines, challenge the rigid specialties and dogmatic divisions, making it urgent to rethink both the conditions of possibility of disciplinary fields and new methods of approach for contemporary objects. Interdisciplinarity, then, will be one that operates transits 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 deepening knowledge through dialogue between various related areas, both in the sciences and humanities.
PPGArq/PUC-Rio aims for rigorous, continuous, and specific training in the field of Architecture. It is guided by a strict methodological and theoretical foundation, research capacity, and critical reflection on the conceptual and practical foundations that define architecture as a specific field of knowledge and practice, linked to the experience of the built environment, housing, sustainability of built spaces, and life in cities. It seeks, notably, to broaden the reflection on the activity and the notion of “Project” in the field of Architecture.
In this trajectory, PPGArq begins its activities with the Master’s Degree in Architecture (2013), currently (2024) being in the elaboration of the proposal for the Doctorate Course based on the same original principles that underlie the creation of the Program.
Marcos Favero
Director of the Department of Architecture and Urbanism
