Architecture and Urban Planning Design

The PPG-AU-UPM’s Focal Area is Architecture and Urbanism. It emphasizes academic research into Architecture and Urbanism and its connections with practice, in particular with design in every scale – from buildings to cities – and particular emphasis on representation and/or intervention, contributing to the construction of theoretical and conceptual frameworks of reference needed for the critical thinking of researchers, professors and/or professionals.

Modern and Contemporary Architecture: Representation and Intervention: Aims to cover specific architectural design references, historical evolution and modern and contemporary interpretations. Addresses reflection on and investigation of the act of designing, emphasizing forms of representation and intervention and the transformation of design’s creative and teaching processes. Critically addresses various contemporary design methodologies and strategies, in the light of socio-cultural, technical and technological transformations, and research associated with the comprehension and critical analysis of modern and contemporary architectural production.

Modern and Contemporary Urbanism: A critical analysis of the transformations that contemporary cities undergo, the production process of the urban space; modern and contemporary urbanization and urbanism; urbanism interventions, emphasizing emerging problems and current solutions from a transformative point of view. Built space and public space, urbanism instruments, urban policy, urban design and urban plans, intervention and sustainability; cultural heritage and intervention in historical centers and degraded areas, environment and sustainability; historiography of modern and contemporary Brazilian urbanism.