When Rem Koolhaas, one of the most paradigmatically architects of nowadays, questions himself Whatever happened to urbanism?, one puts in evidence a latent crises in actual domain. Identity crises? Formal crises? Institutional crises? Operating in the studies and investigations field of urban environment and the relationship between the architectural discipline with the production of thoughts, spaces and policies in the cities, this research mobilizes key-concepts, guidelines to articulate the reflection about the current condition of architecture and some of the meanings adopted in its discourse. Following a critic line of thoughts towards functionalist urbanism – towards its scientific, prognostic mentality, with a certain productivist moral – and its deployments in actuality, in urban contexts marked by the hegemony of advanced capitalist system. One may identify this critic retrospectively with the ideas addressed by the situationist theory, in the 1960 decade, also associating it with conflicts pointed out by Henri Lefebvre s discourse about space politics – especially when it comes to the oppositions between agents present in the space practices, bringing up debates about the spaces of representation, public spaces and the everyday space. Those categories, listed above, permeate interdisciplinary discourses, making possible, with a web of case studies, discussions about aspects in which the architectural field might be enriched by the approach of urban uses and phenomenon - or appropriations - that turn their attention to social relations, behavior, corporeal or temporal relations within space, instead of favoring prevailing conducts of functional and productivist planning. One questions the assigned role of the architect as the uses and meanings of space definer, by approaching situations that quarrel the traditional concept of project as an instrument of synthesis, anticipation and control.