The teaching of fire safety in an architecture course in Brazil

Abstract

In his professional assignments, the architect has to deal with the design of Fire Safety measures in buildings, being essential solid learning on this subject. However, the participation of these professionals in the process of adding these measures in the project development is still fragile, due to the fault in Architecture and Urbanism courses in Brazil. Therefore, it is the educational institutions’ responsibility to guarantee access to this theme in their curriculum, so that the architect acquires, in his learning process, enough fire safety notions to design an optimized architectural project. The objective of this article is to evaluate the teaching of Fire Safety in an Architecture and Urbanism course in Brazil. The results confirmed the deficiency in teaching and, from it the main gaps in the institution’s teaching were pointed out We expect that the result of this study will promote reflections on changes in the pedagogical programs of Architecture and Urbanism undergraduate courses of Brazilian universities and, consequently, contribute to the professional development and to greater security of buildings.