During the last decades climate change is being felt in many parts of the world. In many cities, the temperature rise is intensified by urban projects which morphologies difficult ventilation, increase absorption areas and areas of reflection of sunlight. Consequently, the local microclimate is altered and the temperature rise is felt more intensely by the population. Urban form and typology of buildings can affect local microclimate creating or avoiding, for example, the greenhouse effect. This article aims to study the changes of morphology and typology of Copacabana since 1930 that might have led to these changes. Results from previous studies were used. These studies were done using virtual simulations of ventilation and temperature, as well as physical simulations with models of parts of Copacabana in a tunnel of wind, verifying changes in ventilation and local temperature in the past 80 years. In this study were used data from simulations confronted with the morphologies of the neighborhood in the 1930s, 1950 and 2010, in order to check the influence of the typological and morphological changes in the results obtained. For this study were considered analytic categories described in the literature for the analysis of sustainable urban projects. The study confirmed the initial hypotheses in which the morphological changes in an urban project can have direct consequences on the environment, as was the case of Copacabana area in which there was a considerable rise in temperature and a change in the pattern of ventilation.
Urban design; Urban morphology; Change of microclimate; Rio de Janeiro