UFPB’s Architecture and Urbanism graduate and post-graduate program (PPGAU-UFPB) started its activities in May 2008, with a masters course approved by Brazilian Funding agency CAPES, supported by research developed within departments such as Architecture, Civil Engineering, History and Geography. Nowadays, PPGAU’S academic masters and PhD courses are dedicated to Architects, Urban planners, Engineers and affiliated areas interested in studying subjects related with Architecture and Urbanism history and technology. The programs’ main aim is to offer advanced professionals, researchers and lecturers formation, capacitating in teaching, researching and practicing in Architecture and Urbanism. Researches emphasize on critical approaches with an integrated view of diverse knowledge areas that involve Architecture and Urbanism design, throughout different research laboratories (such as NDIHR, LPPM, LABEME, LAURBE, LABCON, LECCUR, LM+P, LEU). Specifically PPGAU calls for the need to diversify and deepen its theoretical approach and to encompass diverse national and international problematic, answering to increasing interchanges between institutions and a plural background of its students and researchers.

In 2014, aligned with CAPES approval of a PhD course, PPGAU’s main research areas were restructured, concentrating on Architecture and Cities: process and product. The program now envisions the architectural and urban object as a constitutive part of a complex process of conception, materialization and appropriation, and is structured in three main research subjects:

SUBJECT AREA 1 _ Building and city production and appropriation: Aims at studying types of city and building production, stemming from a variety of analytical approaches – morphological, historical, politic-economical, environmental and socio-spatial – and space appropriation – focusing on cultural, symbolic and historical questions;

SUBJECT AREA 2 _ Building and city design: Aims at studying design in its many architectural and urban scales, by analysing its configuration associated to conception and appropriation processes, emphasizing, on one hand, on sociocultural, historical, historiographical, symbolic aspects and, on the other hand, analytical fields related to information technology, processes, methods and design techniques;

SUBJECT AREA 3 _ Built environment quality: Aims at analysing and evaluating the built environment, its physical-spatial components and uses, emphasising on design quality and environmental comfort (thermic, luminance, acoustic, ergonomic and bioclimatic), and tackling subjects such as sustainability, mobility, accessibility, form, uses, technology and constructive materials.

In the last four-year evaluation of CAPES-Brasil in 2017, the PPGAU-UFPB maintained the concept 4 in Architecture and Urbanism for masters and doctorates.