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.
Contributors
Adil Bokhari, Federico Campagna, Robert Cha, Jennifer Chen, John Cooper and Krish Dittmer, Graham Harman, Damjan Jovanovic, Neil Leach, Elena Manferdini, Alina Nazmeeva, Antoine Picon, Carlo Ratti and Marco Santambrogio, Paulette Singley, Neil Spiller, Andrew Witt, and Natasha Wanganeen and Liam Young
Featured
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