From May 15 to June 4, 2026, the Municipal Art Hall of Trieste, located in Piazza Unità d’Italia 4, will host the exhibition “Measured Utopias. Aldo Aymonino and Giuseppe Caldarola”, promoted by Stazione Rogers, the Municipality of Trieste, and the University of Trieste – Department of Engineering and Architecture, in collaboration with the RRRLab research unit of the Department of Engineering and Architecture.

The exhibition will be open daily from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. and from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

The exhibition presents a research project by Aldo Aymonino and Giuseppe Caldarola dedicated to the relationship between architecture, the city, and utopian design. At the core of the investigation lies a simple yet decisive question for architectural thought: what is the purpose of measuring that which, by its very nature, tends to escape measurement?

“Measured Utopias” compares twenty-three urban utopias developed between the 18th and 20th centuries, from Claude-Nicolas Ledoux to Ildefons Cerdà, from Ebenezer Howard to Le Corbusier, from Frank Lloyd Wright to Archigram, from Aldo Rossi and Giorgio Grassi to Buckminster Fuller and Burning Man. These models are redrawn, reconstructed, and compared through shared dimensions, and then extensively applied to a specific site: the industrial area of Porto Marghera.

The project constructs a critical sequence of reflections on the role that urban utopia can still play in contemporary architectural practice and thought. Redrawing becomes an analytical tool: a way to read, dissect, compare, and reassemble urban visions that are distant from one another, yet united by the desire to imagine a different city.

The choice of Porto Marghera as the field of application carries strategic significance. It is a rarefied, infrastructural, and productive territory, situated in relation to one of the most recognizable historic centers in the world, Venice. This context makes it possible to test the utopian models under examination, highlighting their scale, density, territorial impact, and figurative potential.

The exhibition proposes an exercise in comparison between measurement and form, between desire and possibility, between urban imagination and design. The utopias under analysis become critical devices through which to question, even today, the meaning of the city, urban form, and architecture.

The exhibition is curated by:

Thomas Bisiani
Stazione Rogers

Eddi Dalla Betta
Municipality of Trieste, Territorial Planning Service

Adriano Venudo
University of Trieste, Department of Engineering and Architecture