Visual communication at FAU USP: history, implementation and characteristics of the education

Author(s)

Dora Souza Dias

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo (FAU/SBI)
• Defense date: 2015-08-13

Examining board members

Marcos da Costa Braga; Andréa de Souza Almeida; Clice de Toledo Sanjar Mazzilli

• Advisor: Marcos da Costa Braga

Abstract

Education in design, comprising industrial design and visual communication, was implemented at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at the University of São Paulo in the year 1962. These disciplines were included in the curriculum of Architecture as part of a novel education model, with the target of qualifying professionals with a broadened vision. In this study, we rescued, recorded and analysed the history of the education in visual communication at FAU USP, as a contribution to the reconstruction of the roots of education in design in São Paulo and in Brazil as a whole. Based upon an extensive data collection and using a qualitative approach, we present historical figures, content of the disciplines, and teaching practices in the 1960s. Methods of oral history and micro-history were adopted to rescue and analyse the information obtained. We verified that the education on visual communication at FAU USP in the 1960s emerged under international influences, particularly from the Bauhaus school. In addition, some Brazilian artists and modern architects, in charge of some disciplines, exerted strong influences on the design education and established a certain dichotomy between a more artistic and a more rationalistic way of teaching in the Visual Communication sequence during that decade. We concluded that the combination of these two approaches - artistic and modern graphic design - provided the education in visual communication at FAU USP to reach the goals of the historical educational reform of 1962: training professionals with a more broad and plural vision of the design. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 13/09945-8 - Teaching of visual communication at FAU USP: history, implementation and characteristics
• Grantee: Dora Souza Dias
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master