The Neutralization of Utopia
Utopias are places of maximum meaning. They arise from a desire for order, legibility, and control - as a counter-image to the complexity of reality. In Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), the city is a closed system: geometrically clear, functionally defined, socially regulated. Utopia is not fantasy, but radical rationality.
Founded in 1593 as an ideal fortified city, Palmanova is a rare historical realization of this thinking. Its star-shaped geometry, strict symmetry, and military logic turn the city into a built idea. Palmanova did not grow; it was designed. It is less the product of history than of theory - a city that does not describe what is, but prescribes what should be.
Here, however, the paradox begins.
Palmanova exists not only as a plan, but as everyday life—and everyday life is what utopias do not account for. More’s city functions because it is conceived, not because it is lived. Palmanova, by contrast, has been used for centuries: walked, worn, ignored. Ideal order encounters bodies, routines, and time.
Its geometric totality cannot be experienced from within. The star exists mainly in maps and aerial views. On the ground, the city breaks into routes, edges, and shortcuts. Planned axes lose their force, walls become paths, bastions turn into passages. The city is not interpreted; it is used.
In this use, utopia is neutralized - not through failure, but through success. Palmanova works, and for that very reason its exceptional character disappears. What was once extraordinary becomes ordinary infrastructure.
The ordinary is not the opposite of utopia, but its final state. The more complete an order is, the less visible it becomes. The perfect city explains nothing, promises nothing, demands nothing. It is simply there.
PALMA NOVA does not attempt to revive Palmanova as utopia. It shows how invisible that utopia has become: not as critique or nostalgia, but as a sober description of a condition - the normality of a perfectly planned city.
Utopia does not collapse under reality; it fades into habit.