Abstract

Teaching architectural projects is a speculative practice, one of thought, creativity, and shaped by the contingencies of adverse situations. In the leap from postmodern to digital, we have fallen into an era of smooth surfaces that offer no intellectual resistance. The messages received in university classrooms, media and social networks are stripped of all effective negativity, subjugating themselves to the complacent culture of the “like.” How can we avoid educational paralysis in the face of the anesthetics that society injects us with? Project self-sabotage is a direct product of this anti-Trojan situation and represents the most recurrent pedagogical obstacle in architectural project classes. Since students are not trained in critical thinking or do not have sufficient tools to argue, they do not know how to express their desires or intuitions. Not mastering dialectics prevents them from projecting; insufficient argumentation limits their creative potential. It is pertinent to review books that are a call to this pedagogical concern. From the West, Learning from Las Vegas (1972) defamiliarized the automatic reflexes of students lethargic due to the crisis of 1968. From the East, Made in Tokyo (2001) challenged traditional academia in the midst of a strong economic recession. Both proposals are an effective guide to how the architectural discipline can create, from teaching and practice, other tools of thought to project in times of crisis.