Tools for Bewilderment: Pedagogies in Times of Transformation

Abstract

This article presents a selection of student projects developed in the 2024–25 academic year at the Universidad Europea de Madrid, exploring radical architectural strategies through emerging technologies and speculative methods facilitated by AI. Against the backdrop of ecological, geopolitical, and epistemological crises, and within the broader CDIO–PBL educational framework, students were invited to rethink architectural design beyond normative solutions. Artificial intelligence was not approached as a neutral tool, but as an active agent capable of destabilizing disciplinary conventions and enabling new modes of thinking. Across seven distinct case studies, this work articulates a pedagogy grounded in critical inquiry, intuitive exploration, and transdisciplinary engagement. The results are not final proposals but open-ended provocations that challenge established hierarchies between representation and imagination, between form and fiction. By documenting this pedagogical experiment, the article contributes to the ongoing debate on how to teach architecture in times of profound technological and cultural transformation.