Torino Stratosferica announces the 5th edition of Utopian Hours, from 8th to 10th October 2021 taking place at La Centrale Nuvola Lavazza.
In October 2020 the city-making festival Utopian Hours claimed that “The City was at Stake” with its fragilities and contradictions having been accentuated by the pandemic.
This year, the theme of the 2021 edition, ‘The 1000-minute city’, is a positive hymn to the future.
The city is everywhere, no longer linked only to the materiality of the land but to the very idea of being a citizen, always and everywhere.
The 1000 minutes take on new meaning in this context, as they become an ideal extension of today’s urban spirit. A bold, even daring idea to go beyond the buzzwords of the 15-minute city, a concept of urban regeneration theorized by New Urbanism in the 1980s and now a popular byword.
Time and not space becomes the measure of things, and the city becomes a state of being rather than just a physical-geographical location. With the vision of a city that is everywhere, open and widespread as if it were the whole of Europe – to use Renzo Piano’s brilliant metaphor –questions arise, as to how far will the city go and what will the extent of urban development be.
The 1000-minute city is not just a provocation: the idea of an infinite city describes the current disconnect between being a citizen and the urban form. Utopian Hours 2021 aims at showing that cities can once again become the centre of progress, despite its current undeniable challenges.
The 1,000-minute metaphor urges us to consider a new urban protagonism, in the knowledge that, for at least four thousand years, the propulsive power capable of providing solutions to the great modern difficulties has always resided in cities. Today, we must imagine a city that is larger, not smaller, and whose extension is defined by its residents rather than by its borders.
Following this line of thought, Torino Stratosferica invites the public to enter a 1000-minute city, guided by the experiences and initiatives of international guests who will submit ideas and projects for “creating the city” from three different perspectives.
The conversation on the festival’s first day will revolve around the city-institution challenges: what models and ideas for an incisive and dynamic city-institution are available?
The protagonists of the future 1000-minute city will take the stage on the second day to present their projects for improving social life quality, as well as to imagine a new future of places and services.
On the last day, the Utopian Hours stage will be enlivened by a lineup of creatives, artists, and city makers eager to share their perspectives on the city’s image and their plans for reinterpreting it with the public.
Robert Hammond, founder of Friends of the High Line together with Joshua David, has evolved a basic grassroots activity into a New York City-supported venture that has become a global icon of placemaking.
Kunlé Adeyemi is a Nigerian architect and designer. His urban planning, design, and architecture (NLÉ) practice is engaged on five continents, developing new initiatives and climate change projects. Makoko Floating School, his creation on stilts, has set a precedent: an excellent case of addressing the environmental challenge with ingenuity and bravery.
Soraya Axelsson is in charge of the project H22-The Making of a Smarter City, an expo sponsored by Ikea with the goal of making Helsingborg one of Europe’s most creative cities as well as an inspiring example.
Michael Grove is the director of the worldwide firm Sasaki and is a landscape architect and urban designer. His projects have changed the way people live in cities all around the world.
Peter Vesterbacka after years in the tech industry, he became famous thanks to the popular game Angry Birds. Now, the Finnish entrepreneur wants to merge Tallinn and Helsinki into a single urban area with a tunnel under the Gulf of Finland. The name of the project: Finest Bay Area.
Mariana Valverde is a sociologist and expert in urban law and governance. Mariana pushes us to go beyond top-down approaches in the implementation of large-scale projects, underlining that every infrastructure is historically a combination of the state, companies, and citizens. She is the author of various books, including the 2011 pamphlet Seeing Like a City.
Carlo Stanga a Berlin-based Italian illustrator and architect, portrayed with his drawings the world’s most famous architecture and cities. The collection of illustrated books, I am the City, tells the stories of Milan, London and New York. Among his collaborations: Moleskine, all Street Journal, UNESCO.
Brion Oaks is committed to combatting discrimination and improving the living conditions of minorities as the city of Austin’s first Chief Equity Officer. A new public figure is gaining traction across the United States, marking a major step in bridging the gap between local communities and government administrations.
Full program and guest list are available at utopianhour.it/en.
Ticketing: for in-person and live streaming options visit the website: full festival, full-day, individual slots, and live streaming. Limited early bird tickets available for the full festival, full-day, and live streaming.
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Utopian Hours 2021 takes place from 8 to 10 October 2021 at La Centrale Nuvola Lavazza, via Ancona 11/A, 10152, Turin, Italy.
