Europe's leading festival dedicated to city-making and urban innovation is making its highly anticipated return to Turin. Utopian Hours 2025 promises three days of intensive programming featuring masterclasses, talks, workshops, roundtables, and exhibitions that showcase cutting-edge approaches to urban development from around the globe.
The festival brings together more than 40 international guests, including influential media figures, leading urban planning experts, and Europe's most forward-thinking city officials. These participants will gather to exchange ideas, tools, experiences, solutions, desires, and passions related to contemporary urban challenges. The event demonstrates how urban and social innovation happens in practice and explores how the very concept of city-making is being stretched in bold new directions.
Two distinguished architects headline the opening day of Utopian Hours 2025. Elizabeth Diller, co-founding partner of the renowned firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro, brings decades of experience redefining the relationship between architecture, culture, and public life. Her impressive portfolio includes major cultural institutions such as The Shed in New York, the Museum of Modern Art expansion, the VA East Storehouse in London, and recent projects in Doha.
Joining Diller as a keynote speaker is Winy Maas, co-founder of MVRDV, whose innovative architectural approach has gained international recognition. Together, these two visionaries represent a design intelligence that consistently blurs traditional boundaries, elevates public experience, and embraces the city as a living stage for human interaction and cultural expression.
Diller's work particularly exemplifies the festival's core mission of threading major cultural institutions, civic imagination, and experimental performance into a unified inquiry about urban form and function. Her trajectory underscores a sophisticated understanding of how architecture can serve as a catalyst for social change and community engagement.
The festival's programming reflects a comprehensive approach to urban innovation, offering attendees multiple formats for learning and collaboration. Masterclasses provide intensive, hands-on learning opportunities, while talks feature presentations from leading experts in urban planning and development. Workshops encourage active participation and collaborative problem-solving, and roundtables facilitate in-depth discussions on specific urban challenges.
Exhibitions throughout the festival showcase real-world examples of successful urban innovation projects from cities worldwide. These displays serve as both inspiration and practical case studies, demonstrating how theoretical concepts translate into tangible improvements in urban life. The festival's emphasis on recipes and case studies ensures that attendees leave with actionable insights they can apply in their own communities.
Turin provides an ideal backdrop for this exploration of urban innovation, as the city itself has undergone significant transformation in recent decades. The festival leverages the city's experience as a laboratory for urban renewal and reimagining, making it a fitting location for discussions about the future of city-making.
Utopian Hours 2025 represents more than just an academic conference; it serves as a crucial platform for fostering international collaboration and knowledge sharing in urban development. As cities worldwide face unprecedented challenges related to population growth, climate change, and social inequality, events like this festival become essential for developing innovative solutions and building networks among urban professionals.
