Create: speculate and subvert

Where is your place of creation? This article establishes that to make innovative proposals in the architectural project, designers must break the laws of what they know, see beyond what is given, and subvert the statu quo. The proposal is understood at the junction between the projective exercise and the cognitive processes behind creativity, inviting to project from the rupture that thinking about apparently unconnected universes supposes. To support that proposal, we provide a theoretical framework to understand creativity in architecture in light of Csikszentmihalyi’s System Theory, define the type of problems we solve as architects, and present Bourdieu’s Field Theory to explain the functioning of the social context. From there, we propose that the use of strategies based on cognitive processes, such as divergent thinking or metaphorical thinking, can promote these ruptures and will allow the appearance of innovative proposals that will destabilize these fields and will promote progress in the discipline.