Project Self-sabotage Architectural teaching in adverse situations

Abstract

Teaching architectural projects is a speculative practice of thought, creativity and shaped by the contingencies of adverse situations. In the leap from the postmodern to the digital, we have fallen into an era of a smooth surface that does not oppose intellectual resistance. The messages received in university classrooms, media, and social networks are stripped of effective negativity, subjugating themselves to the complacency of the ‘like’ culture. How can we avoid educational paralysis against the anesthetics injected by society itself? The projectual self-sabotage is a direct product of this anti-Trojan situation and represents the most recurrent pedagogical tripwire in design studios. Since students are not trained in critical thinking or do not have enough tools to argue, they do not know how to express desires or intuitions. By not mastering dialectics, they distrust their possibilities in designing, and the argumentative insufficiency 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 affected by the lethargy due to the crisis of 1968. From the East, Made in Tokyo (2001) challenged the contents of traditional academe in the midst of a severe economic recession. They are an effective guide of how the architectural discipline can create, from the practice and university, other thinking tools to project in times of crisis.