History

         The Post-Graduate Program in Architecture and Urbanism - PPGAU of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte - UFRN began in March 1998, with the Specialization Course "Studies of the Habitat with Emphasis on Environmental Issues" approved and financed by the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Level Personnel - CAPES, through the Northeast Project.

        The Master's level was implemented from 1999 on, with CAPES's approval, anchored on the research production that was growing consistently within the Department of Architecture of UFRN. The initial Research Lines of PPGAU resulted from the investigations and intellectual production of its faculty members, congregated under the institutional format of the so-called Research Bases developed by initiative of the UFRN's Dean of Research - PROPESQ, which gather researchers whose studies focus on common themes.

As a result of this evolution of the research activity, with repercussions in the area of teaching and the need to investigate new themes and methods, and of the constant demands in the continuous evaluations of CAPES, in 2003, on completing 5 years of existence, the Program began an internal process of evaluation and restructuring that resulted in the re-ordering of the Areas of Concentration and Lines of Research and the courses offered until then.

The new structure was submitted, justified and approved in several internal UFRN instances, as well as by the area commission at CAPES, resulting in the improvement of the Program's triennial evaluation, in which it obtained a 4 (four) concept. At the time, the faculty was expanded from 10 PhD professors to 11 permanent professors. This made possible the scheduled departure of professors for post-doctoral internships abroad, favored the emergence of national and international exchanges and agreements, and the diversification, expansion, and diffusion of the intellectual production of the Program's faculty.

This restructuring process included, in its discussion agenda, the proposal of the Program for the Doctorate level, which was forwarded to the competent authorities in 2005, and approved by the Scientific Technical Committee - CTC of CAPES in August 2006.

Bases/Research Groups

The Research Bases are similar to the Research Groups registered in the Directory of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development - CNPq. They are certified and evaluated annually by PROPESQ, upon meeting a set of criteria that enables their participants to submit projects and compete for financial support. They can be subdivided into Study Groups aimed at the investigation of specific questions within the larger theme that defines the Base, in which researchers from the same department, from different departments and/or Laboratories, and from other institutions participate.
The first Research Base - Habitat Studies -, created in 1997, brought together most of the researchers of the Department of Architecture and constituted the foundation upon which PPGAU was structured. With the growth of the number of researchers, the diversification and expansion of the themes covered and the emergence of new approaches, this initial composition was dismembered, giving rise to three new Bases that, together with the founding one, from 2005 onwards began to feed the Program's research lines.

Habitat Studies

Since then, the Habitat Studies Research Base, registered with the same denomination in the Directory of Research Groups in CNPq, is structured in the following Study Groups: Housing, Architecture and Urbanism Study Group - GEAU; Agrarian Reform and Habitat Study Group - GERAH; Study Group on Contemporary Urban Processes - GEPUC; and History of the City and Urbanism Study Group - HCURB. Thus, in a comprehensive way, it gathers researchers whose studies have the urban and territorial problematic as an object, configuring three strands of research: city, housing and contemporaneity; physical-territorial management and policies; and history of the city and urbanism. These three strands, which imply in different temporal and spatial clippings, provide a wide debate that concerns the historical or contemporary processes of the constitution of the urban and territorial space from several perspectives, such as the new spatial configurations or the re-use of traditional and historical environments; housing, the city and other forms of human settlements in a context of globalization and postmodernity; the effects of a "tourist urbanization" and the process of metropolization; urban-environmental and housing/sanitation policies and their relation to living and housing conditions; the ideals of Urban Reform in the process of urban and regional planning and its intersection with other ideals such as that of Agrarian Reform; the achievements of organized social groups in urban and rural areas; the monitoring of the implementation of management instruments and of the process of land use and occupation; and the principles, agents, scope, representations and historical conditions that have evolved the urbanistic proposals and the construction of urban space and territory.

MUsA - Morphology and Uses of Architecture

The research base MUsA - Morphology and Uses of Architecture, registered with the same name in CNPq's Directory of Research Groups, encompasses the Group for the Study of the Built Patrimony - GEPE. It contributes to the knowledge of architecture and urbanism fundamentals, and, especially, to the study of relations between theory and built form, and between built form and socio-cultural practices. In the practical field, studies developed have contributed to broaden the knowledge about the formation and transformation of cities and buildings, especially in Northeastern Brazil, as well as to the understanding of paradigms underlying these processes. It also offers resources and instruments for the evaluation of interventions in the built environment and for decision-making in urban and architectural projects. Recent examples are: studies of the effects of expansion and transformation in the road structure on the built heritage of cities, through procedures of modeling and syntactic analysis of space, including the use of GIS tools; the examination of parallels between morphological transformations in housing and the emergence of new residential compositions/habits; the study of the evolutionary panorama of architectural theory in Brazil; the construction of databases on morphological aspects believed to be important for the sustainable development of city centers; the formatting of new instruments and procedures for modeling the built environment.

PROJECT - Project of Architecture and Environmental Perception

The Research Group PROJECT - Architecture Design and Environmental Perception, registered with the same denomination in the CNPq Directory of Research Groups, aims to contribute to the advancement of research and the production of knowledge in the areas of Architecture Design and Environmental Perception. It develops studies around issues related to project theory and architectural conception, design methods and techniques and project teaching/learning; as well as the perception of the environment, as an important theoretical and methodological subsidy to the evaluation and feedback of the design process, with possibilities of application to specific thematic clippings, such as school, hospital, commercial and industrial architecture, the specificity of designing in environments of historical interest and universal accessibility, fundamental aspects for the improvement of environmental quality (architectural and urban) of the cities and, consequently, of the population's quality of life.

Environmental Comfort and Energy Efficiency

The Research Group Environmental Comfort and Energy Efficiency is also registered with the same name in the CNPq Directory of Research Groups. Its objective is to provide subsidies for architectural and urban planning decisions that provide the improvement of environmental comfort and the optimization of energy use aimed at maintaining comfort conditions. The base originated from previous works that sought a better understanding of the influence of climate on the performance of buildings and the influences on the activities developed by their users, especially in the hot and humid tropical climate. For this reason, the base is characterized by the emphasis on research focused on the tropical climate and by the participation of professionals from various areas, generally with multidisciplinary backgrounds. Its researchers guide and develop research in: thermal, luminous and acoustic comfort, at the user and built environment levels; urban microclimates; natural ventilation; thermal and energy performance of buildings; air quality in the built environment; integration of methods and tools to design, among others.

Objectives

The Post-Graduate Program in Architecture and Urbanism at UFRN has as specific objectives:
a) To train high level researchers and teachers aiming to better meet the demand for training in the area of Architecture and Urbanism, considering the specificity of its proposal;
b) To deepen the theoretical and methodological approaches of research, expanding its scope to national and international issues, through the increase of exchanges with other teaching and research institutions of excellence, reciprocal disclosure of their intellectual production and the affluence of master's degree students from other regions of the country;
c) To disseminate the knowledge accumulated (the intellectual capital) in seven years of the Program, expanding this potential beyond the local and regional spheres, and thus contributing to the national development in questions related to the sustainability of human settlements and intervention projects in the territory, the city and the building;
d) To enhance the technical capacity installed in the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte - UFRN and in the Graduate Program in Architecture and Urbanism - PPGAU, in terms of human and material resources, generating and transmitting knowledge through its two areas of concentration - 'Urbanization, Projects and Physical-Territorial Policies' and 'Project, Morphology and Technology in the Built Environment' - to which are linked the bases and lines of research with related themes.

Area of Concentration and Research Lines

SINGLE Area of Concentration - ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM

Research lines (4):
1. TERRITORIAL INTERVENTIONS, SOCIAL HOUSING AND CITIZENSHIP - Theoretical and conceptual foundations and methodology of the process of conception, planning and design of the territory, the socio-spatial relations of the natural and built environment, with emphasis on the production of space and housing associated with social demands.
2.  HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE, URBANISM AND TERRITORY - Addresses the historical processes of urbanization and territorial formation in various dimensions; from colony to present day; the cultural field of architecture and urbanism; representations, transformations, projects, plans and actions; architecture, structure and urban and rural landscape; typologies, spatial arrangements, styles; circulation of ideas and models.
3. DESIGN AND EVALUATION OF THE BUILDING ENVIRONMENT - Focuses on knowledge that feeds the understanding and proposition of the built environment, involving: relationships between the fills and voids that configure it, and different ways it is perceived and used; concepts and methods of conception, development, representation, simulation, management, and evaluation of projects; intervention in areas and buildings of interest for conservation/preservation; the teaching and research in the field of architectural design.
4. TECHNOLOGY AND COMFORT IN THE BUILDING ENVIRONMENT - Investigates urban spaces, buildings, and building systems in terms of planning, bioclimatic design, environmental impact, thermal, acoustical, and lighting performance, energy efficiency, durability, and fire safety.

E-mails:

Secretariat: secretariapos@ct.ufrn.br

coordinator: ufrn.ppgau@gmail.com

Program Postal Address: 
Graduate Program in Architecture and Urbanism -PPGAU/ UFRN

Technology Center

Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte - UFRN

University Campus Lagoa Nova

P.O. Box 1524

CEP 59078-970 - Natal/ RN - BRASIL

Tel (84) 99474-6685 (only from 7am to 1pm) and 99474-6686 (only from 1pm to 7pm)
Office hours: 7am - 7pm.