About the Program

The Graduate Program in Urbanism (PROURB) of the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (FAU-UFRJ) was established in 1993 and regularly offers Academic Master’s and Doctorate degrees in Urbanism, as well as a Professional Master’s degree in Landscape Architecture. The program is part of the National Graduate System and is accredited by CAPES/MEC. It is recognized as a program of excellence and a reference in the field, as evidenced by CAPES evaluations (2004-2006), (2007-2009), and (2010-2012), in which it consecutively received a grade of 6; and in the most recent CAPES evaluation (2017-2020), when it achieved the highest grade of 7.

PROURB stands out for its international reach, the quality of its faculty and student research output, and the excellence of its master’s and doctoral training, reflected in awards, high-impact publications, and the professional development of its graduates.

The special Interinstitutional Doctorate cohorts demonstrate the program’s commitment to academic solidarity by providing high-level education to different regions of the country. The program has successfully completed three special Interinstitutional Doctorate groups: with the State University of Maranhão (DINTER-UEMA), initiated in 2006; with the Federal University of Mato Grosso (DINTER-UFMT-UNEMAT), initiated in 2011; and with the Federal University of Amapá (DINTER-UNIFAP), in 2014.

The program has increasingly attracted international students from Latin America, Africa, and Europe, and more recently from North America, to its Academic Master’s and Doctorate programs, as well as to the Professional Master’s in Landscape Architecture. It has also received a growing number of students for master’s and doctoral sandwich internships.

The faculty has significant representation at various levels of engagement, and its members contribute their technical and scientific expertise by providing technical assistance or specialized consulting services to public administration bodies, non-governmental organizations, and civil society entities.

The Graduate Program in Urbanism at UFRJ is a distinguished and well-established program of excellence, serving as a reference in the field. It stands out for its academic training, knowledge production, social impact, and internationalization. The program has been offering a Master’s degree since 1994 and a Doctorate degree since 2001 in Urbanism.

The program addresses the growing demand in recent decades for the education and training of faculty members and professionals qualified to act responsibly and ethically in the critique, design, and intervention processes related to cities and urban space. It is recognized for its international reach, the high quality of its faculty and student research output, and its ability to produce well-trained master’s and doctoral graduates, as evidenced by awards, high-impact publications, and the professional success of its alumni.

PROURB aims to train highly qualified faculty, researchers, and professionals while advancing scientific research in the field of urbanism, contributing to the quality and relevance of theoretical and critical discourse within Brazilian universities. The program seeks to foster theoretical and methodological debate in the discipline, encourage scientific production and its dissemination, promote national and international academic cooperation and exchange in teaching, research, and outreach, and actively participate in governmental and civil society forums through the expertise of its faculty.

Committed to high-level academic training and knowledge production, PROURB has, since its inception, integrated teaching, research, outreach, and collaboration with other academic institutions and civil society organizations, both nationally and internationally. The program views the dialogue between urban knowledge—both theoretical and practical—as essential for advancing scientific understanding in the field of urbanism.

The Master’s program provides students with methodological tools to develop research questions and frameworks, equipping them to construct theoretical and methodological structures capable of addressing urban challenges. Through research training, students develop analytical and critical perspectives on the discipline, contemporary urban realities, and professional practice. These competencies are fundamental for qualification in academia.

The Doctorate program assumes the intellectual maturity of the researcher, who must independently formulate research topics and problems. These topics are explored with depth and complexity, resulting in original contributions that advance scientific knowledge in the field of Architecture and Urbanism.

Throughout its history, PROURB has proven to be a dynamic program, identifying academic and social demands, fostering innovation, and contributing with proposals and reflections that respond to both regional cultural diversity and the universalization of rights. The global and national context has reinforced the importance of architecture and urbanism and their social roles, while the COVID-19 pandemic has introduced new challenges and perspectives for research and education in the field.

Teaching and research at PROURB are based on the continuous reflection and construction of a plural and interdisciplinary body of knowledge, aligned with the need to act in contemporary society with social and environmental responsibility. In its field of knowledge, the continuous adaptation of its didactic-pedagogical framework to the diverse and complex social demands of cities and urbanized regions, to strategic situations and emerging development frontiers in the country, and to different forms of innovation and temporalities that shape urban design is both desirable and necessary.

The program’s object of study is the city in its multiple dimensions, focusing on the social and cultural processes that shape its physical space and spatial organization, as well as on practices of design and intervention in the urban environment. It emphasizes the physical-territorial dimension, seeking to investigate the historical process of urban agglomeration formation, theories and representations of the city, models of intervention in the built environment, and urban design and city management practices through a multiscalar and interdisciplinary approach.

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O Programa de Pós-Graduação em Urbanismo (PROURB) foi criado em 1993 e vincula-se à Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (FAU-UFRJ), a qual guarda uma tradição acumulada em estudos pós-graduados em Urbanismo desde 1945 (antigo Curso de Urbanismo da então Faculdade Nacional de Arquitetura). A primeira turma do Mestrado Acadêmico em Urbanismo teve início em 1994 e de Doutorado em Urbanismo em 2001.

Concebido como um Programa de Pós-graduação pleno, isto é, articulando ensino, pesquisa e intercâmbio, e visando a formação de alto nível e a produção do conhecimento e a inovação, o PROURB representou a introdução de um novo patamar de pós-graduação na FAU/UFRJ. A criação do PROURB contribuiu para modificar a cultura de pós-graduação até então vigente na escola, enriquecendo o universo da pesquisa e da formação pós-graduada. Sua proposta acadêmica veio responder de forma inovadora às questões teóricas e metodológicas relativas ao projeto, tanto urbano como arquitetônico, lacunas então existentes nos ambientes de reflexão sobre a cidade e o urbano.

Neste período, o estudo da cidade a partir do projeto urbano significava um tema inovador, especialmente por tratar da cidade e do projeto explorando e compreendendo a autonomia disciplinar, mesmo reconhecendo a abordagem interdisciplinar própria ao campo do urbanismo. Isso veio ao encontro das tendências internacionais na área, quando surgiam novos centros de formação doutoral e de pesquisa sobre o projeto. Esta sinergia propiciou, desde o início, trocas acadêmicas e intelectuais com arquitetos professores de renome internacional que atuavam em centros de excelência, como o DEA Projet architectural et Urbain (ENSA-Beleville); Escola de Arquitectura do Porto; AA Architectural Association School, TU Berlin e Facultad de Arquitectura da UBA.

Em suas primeiras turmas, o PROURB recebeu como alunos professores e profissionais experientes, atendendo uma demanda reprimida e especifica da área. Desde então, o PROURB se firmou como formação de excelência atraindo alunos do Rio de Janeiro, de outros estados do país e do exterior.

Marcou ainda este início do Programa a integração da academia com os órgãos de gestão da cidade, sobretudo na reflexão metodológica e da prática de projetos urbanos.

Como um programa de pós-graduação pleno, se destacou desde sua criação pela inserção social e internacionalização. No primeiro decênio do Programa destacam-se os convênios de cooperação internacional institucionalizados como PROBRAL/DAAD, Projetos ALFA da União Européia, e CAPES/COFECUB, que formaram as bases de uma internacionalização sólida com países da América Latina e Europa. Desde então, multiplicaram-se as parcerias e a implementação de ações de pesquisa e ensino conjuntas, incluindo workshops, seminários, mobilidade discente e docente e publicações.

Paralelamente, se intensificava a rede de cooperação com parceiros no país, seja através de convênios de cooperação com centros nacionais como Programas PQI (com a UFES), PRONEX (com UFF e PUC-Rio), e PROCAD (com UFRGS e USP-São Carlos), incluindo a realização de 3 turmas de Doutorado Interinstitucional (DINTER) – com a UEMA (em 2006, o primeiro na área), UFMT-UNEMAT (2011) e UNIFAP (2014) –, além de parcerias e redes de pesquisa com vários centros de pesquisa no estado do Rio de Janeiro e no país.

O PROURB foi também pioneiro na formulação em 2008 do primeiro projeto de Mestrado Profissional da área, em Arquitetura Paisagística, que entrou em funcionamento em 2010.

Nos anos 1990, o PROURB se filiou à ANPUR – Associação Nacional de Pesquisa e Pós-Graduação em Planejamento Urbano e Regional, reforçando as possibilidades do trabalho em rede e interdisciplinar no contexto acadêmico nacional. Filiou-se à ANPARQ – Associação Nacional de Pesquisa e Pós-Graduação em Arquitetura e Urbanismo em 2007, sediando o primeiro Encontro Nacional da Associação em 2010, no Rio de Janeiro.

Desde o início, O PROURB promoveu ações, iniciativas e realizou Seminários importantes para a área de Arquitetura e Urbanismo, demonstrando articulação e liderança nacional. Já em 1994, por ocasião do início do PROURB, foi realizado o Seminário Internacional Cidade e Imaginação, que reuniu professores e arquitetos tanto do país como do exterior, muitos deles vindo ao Brasil pela primeira vez para uma discussão pioneira sobre o tema do projeto urbano.  O Programa teve papel relevante na organização de eventos científicos que hoje figuram dentre os mais importantes na área de Arquitetura e Urbanismo. Na área de Paisagismo, organizou o primeiro ENEPEA em 1994; em 1997, sediou e organizou o IV SHCU – IV Seminário de História da Cidade e do Urbanismo; no campo da Gráfica Digital trouxe para o Brasil o 4º SIGRADI, em 2000; em parceria com a ABAP, organizou, em 2009, o 46 IFLA World Congress; neste mesmo ano, organizou o 8º Seminário Docomomo Nacional, que comemorou os 50 anos do Congresso Internacional Extraordinário de Críticos de Arte. Além disso, em 2007, liderou a Escola de Altos Estudos que reuniu os PPGs da área num curso internacional, evento até então inédito no país.

A contribuição do corpo docente do PROURB para políticas acadêmicas e de pesquisa na área é relevante e continuada desde 1997. Destacamos a Representação de Área AUD e no CTC da CAPES por duas gestões, Coordenação de Área na FAPERJ – Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro por cinco gestões, Comitê de Assessoramento do CNPq por uma gestão, além da participação constante nas diretorias de associações cientificas como ANPUR, ANPARQ e Docomomo. Destaques recentes de grande importância são a Presidência e o Comitê Cientifico do Congresso da União Internacional de Arquitetos, UIA 2020 no Rio de Janeiro, com membros docentes do Programa.

The Academic Master’s and Doctorate programs in Urbanism have two areas of concentration:

• History and Theory of Urbanism
• Urban Design

Research in the program is organized into five research lines:

• Morphology, Structuring, and Design of Urban Space
• History of the City and Urbanism
• Informal Settlements and Housing
• Urban Environment and Landscape Design
• Digital Graphics and Representation in Urbanism

For a description of the research lines and the studies associated with each, see the Research Lines page.

PROURB is located in the Jorge Machado Moreira building, within the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at UFRJ, on the Fundão Campus, University City.

Its internal organization includes:
a) Coordination;
b) Administrative office;
c) Individual or shared offices for all faculty members;
d) Two classrooms equipped with multimedia projection and interactive whiteboards (e-boards); one of these is a studio room with drafting tables, storage cabinets, three iMac computers, and a videoconferencing system;
e) Two meeting rooms and four large integrated research spaces;
f) A study area equipped with computers for master’s and doctoral students;
g) Computer Laboratory;
h) Data Processing Center;
i) SIDU (Urbanism Information and Documentation Service);
j) Kitchenette;
l) Storage and supply room.

All spaces are air-conditioned and equipped with integrated computing and communication networks, including wired and wireless internet, telephone, and intranet services, all connected to UFRJ’s telephone network.

The program also features a multimedia room with 60 seats, equipped with state-of-the-art audiovisual technology, including a videoconferencing system with five simultaneous connection points, a digital interactive whiteboard, a multimedia projector, a simultaneous translation booth, and an interconnected wireless internet network.

In addition to its dedicated facilities, PROURB benefits from shared FAU resources, including the library, three auditoriums with capacities ranging from 200 to 400 seats, audiovisual equipment, a model laboratory, and a 3D printer.

PROURB is part of a dynamic academic environment and benefits from important documentation centers and libraries both within and beyond UFRJ. Notably, it offers easy access to collections such as the National Library, the National Archive, and the Rio de Janeiro City Archive, which are highly valuable for historical research in Architecture and Urbanism.

The program heavily invests in data and imaging communication technology to support teaching, research, outreach, and academic exchange activities. High-tech telematics investments also aim to enhance its internationalization goals, academic cooperation, and the dissemination of scientific and technical production through remote lectures and courses. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, PROURB acquired a Zoom room and also operated with Google Meet rooms. Remote activities were monitored by the program’s IT center.

Recently, PROURB acquired a high-end drone for aerial surveys and 3D modeling research, as well as an HTC Vive virtual reality system for immersive experiences.

The equipment at LAMO 3D – the 3D Modeling Laboratory – provides essential support, particularly for research in the Digital Graphics and Representation in Urbanism line. In 2019, PROURB was awarded funding through the FINEP Infrastructure Call for Proposals, enabling the acquisition of the following equipment:

• 1 Vacuum Forming Machine (GET-P Nabuurs);
• 1 Kuka KR60-r3 Robotic Manufacturing Unit;
• 1 SHM2030 CNC Router.

The program’s Multimedia Auditorium Room is equipped with a modern multipoint videoconferencing system, enabling long-distance classes, conferences, and lectures.

PROURB’s IT and networking infrastructure is continuously expanded and upgraded, with the replacement and acquisition of new computers and equipment as needed. This policy is made possible through funding from PROEX/CAPES and PROAP/CAPES, as well as grants obtained through academic agreements and research funding calls from national and international agencies.