Graduate urban planning programs are becoming more and more oriented towards professional practice while relying on workshops as the pedagogical device of choice. This communication questions the teaching challenges that come along with the studio-workshop: how to untangle territorial realities and processes in a pedagogical perspective and how to enable the right timing to develop project design processes and strategies by the learners. Two pedagogical experiences (respectively based on the University of Geneva and Keio University) illustrate how teaching philosophies deal with these workshop challenges. The first one enables students to develop their own project strategies and visions while the second one understands project teaching as a learning process of a given and recognizable design approach.