The environment as issue for education: subject and matters for more conscious and competent architects

Although the concept of sustainable development was encoded in 1987, it is only since 1993 that world of construction has been awarded about the relevance of environmental consequences from its actions, and soon after the consciousness to act in a proper way focused the attention of designers. In the same year the XVIII World Congress of Architects held in Chicago was titled “Architecture at a crossroad: designing for a sustainable future” and it recorded the first systematic approach to the search for new solutions and new conceptions of forms, materials and spatial arrangements responsive to the imperative demand for new approaches to the environmental issues. The responsibility of professionals to take actions towards a new environmental culture immediately calls for an appropriate education of them, aimed to develop environmental issues as integral part of the educational and pedagogical strategies in the school of architecture.