Master in Architectural Design

The master’s program in architecture and urbanism at FAUUSP is the oldest and most prestigious graduate program in Brazil, having started in 1972. Consists of 1440 hours (140 ECTS) in eight research areas: architectural design, habitat, history and aesthetics of architecture, landscape and environment, city planning, space and culture, and architecture technology.

The area architectural design presents itself as an instrument of theoretical-practical reflection on the various scales that involve the architectural intervention, from the building to its unfolding in the urban space, recognising the design as a peculiar form of knowledge production that mobilizes codes and representations. There are three research lines:

1. Design: production and research

It deals with the constituent elements of the design and its fundamentals. It understands by elements the technical instruments used in the conception, the production processes and the systems of representation as project strategy. The fundamentals refer to the theoretical-practical concepts that guide decisions.

2. Architecture and the city

It deals with the relationship between building, city and its intermediate scales. It considers therefore that architecture manifests itself in the historical process of the constitution of the urban space. Their fields of interest as research go , on a growing scale, from the transition areas between buildings and the city to urban interventions.

3. Design: Theory and method

It proposes the investigation of the theories and methodologies that underpin the architectural design, whether in its prospective dimension as informant of the production processes, on in its critical and pedagogical bias as an analytical reflection on this production.