From October 18 to 20, Utopian Hours returns for its eighth edition in Turin, Italy. Created and organized by Stratosferica, this year the festival will once again gather the brightest minds in urban design, architecture, and planning. Presenters and attendees converge on the Italian city to explore what’s next for sustainable, impactful, and delightful cities of tomorrow.
With the practices of architecture, urbanism, and placemaking grappling with its effects on—and responsibilities—toward a variety of crises, the upcoming edition continues with the theme of creating a Manifesto for a New City Making.
Keywords for citymaking were shared by last year’s presenters, and this year new statements will be contributed by new guests. Several themes are of particularly urgent interest, including real estate’s capacity for social impact, mobility and accessibility; green and just transitions for the building sector; and innovation in the spaces of urban technology.
“Don’t be mistaken by the term ‘utopia:’ It is not an escape from reality, but a vision of how to create better places through awareness, imagination, and collective involvement,” Stratosferica wrote in a statement released this week.
The eighth festival is bringing together more internationally recognized voices than ever before, and The Architect’s Newspaper is proud to again serve as a media partner for Utopian Hours 2024. The program will showcase a range of voices from emerging practitioners to top design talent and civic leaders: Notable invited firms include Gehl, Field Operations, Hawkins\Brown, IF_DO, Landprocess, and De Urbanisten, in addition to myriad temporary initiatives and cultural programming. Celebrated photographers like Nick Hannes will also join the mix. All will be featured on the Utopian Hours stage at Turin’s Centrale Lavazza.
“Once again, we bring to Torino leading innovators and designers from all around the world, bringing to life the most relevant and prominent international festival dedicated to cities. It’s an important recognition of Italy’s role in shaping the urban agenda of the future,” Giacomo Biraghi, Stratosferica’s president, said.
There will also be a special mini-expo, titled “The Urbanites’ Fair,” dedicated exclusively to magazines, editors, content creators, independent collectives, and enterprises focused on the dissemination of new knowledge in architecture and urbanism. As media guests, editors from AN, POLITICO, and Bloomberg CityLab will all be in attendance along with mini-expo participants like Milk, Sure Mesure, and The Place Bureau, among many others.
Manifesto for a New City Making will continue the collective reflection that took center stage at last year’s festival. The various events, panels, workshops, and urban activations will encourage new ways to imagine, design, live, and tell stories about and within the city, in Italy and beyond. Festival goers no doubt expect the same caliber of brilliant, playful, and impactful public installations of past Utopian Hours, as guests have so much to look forward to from placemakers like Yes We Camp and Prostorož and city officials like Ya-Ting Liu, New York’s first Chief Public Realm Officer.
Tickets are still available for this upcoming festival, which stands to be another inspiring gathering. As Luca Ballarini, founder and director of Stratosferica, reminds us: “Let’s not forget that cities are, first and foremost, the extraordinary fruit of human imagination, a way to establish our place in the cosmos.”
