This article presents reflections on the pedagogical experience of the Project Atelier of the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, developed in the seventh semester, where the search for construction of propositional hypotheses aims to think and rethink the place of the project as an instrument of the right to life, based on an inseparable practice of research, teaching and extension, whose central question is how the design exercise can be presented as a tool for the contribution of the struggle for the democratic expansion of the contemporary urban condition. From the necessary approaches - theoretical, cartographic, analytical and critical - to pedagogical practice, through approaches and construction of dialogue between agents of organized social movements, the experience was structured on the tripod right to the city / agents of resistance / meanings of project and sought to promote project reflection on the centrality of the use of its public space as a guarantee of rights in, for and over the city.