Chimera: The Architecture of Contemporary Utopias VOL 96.2, Architectural Design, 2026
What if the most urgent task for architecture today is to reclaim the work of imagining? In a present shaped by predictive models, climate dashboards, and platform logics that cast the future as already known—appearing to foreclose not only the possibility of transformation but the very meaningfulness of pursuing it—this issue of Architectural Design A–D, guest-edited by Elena Manferdini and Damjan Jovanovic, argues for the continued necessity of utopian thinking within and against the systems that constrain us.
Featuring essays by
Elena Manferdini & Damjan Jovanovic — Chimeras: Speculations on the Architecture of Contemporary Utopias
Graham Harman — Beyond the City of the Sun
Federico Campagna — Under a Winter Sun
Adil Bokhari — Voyagers, Voyeurs, Vectors
Damjan Jovanovic — Planet Garden
Alina Nazmeeva — DIS-PLAY
Liam Young & Natasha Wanganeen — After the End
Jennifer Chen — Climate Punk
Robert Cha — AI Sapien Portraits
Elena Manferdini — Viral
Andrew Witt — Heliotopia
Paulette Singley — Drawing a Line in the Sand
John Cooper & Krish Dittmer — Report from Practopia
Carlo Ratti, Antoine Picon & Marco Santambrogio — Opera Aperta
Neil Leach — From Utopia to Dystopia
Neil Spiller — Margherissima: A Venetian Chimera
Featuring work by
Sophia Al-Maria, Archigram, Architectural Association, Atelier Manferdini, AtkinsRéalis, Arthur Becker, Tega Brain, Paolo Canevari, Carlo Ratti Associati, Certain Measures, Nigel Coates, Delugan Meissl Associated Architects, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Peter Eisenman, Buckminster Fuller, Michael Graves, Grymsdyke Farm, Wes Jones, Rem Koolhaas, Elia Zenghelis, Madelon Vriesendorp, and Zoe Zenghelis, Norman Foster Foundation, Andrea Pozzo, Giulio Romano, Federico Spoltore, Studio Lifeforms, Studio Meteora (ETH Zürich), John Maybury, Jack Oliva-Rendler, Superstudio, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Venice Architecture Biennale, Rain Wu