Utopia Picta
Pratiques analogiques dans la ville composite
Exhibition | ENSASE, Cabinet de dessins | Nicola Braghieri, Reda Berrada, Filippo Cattapan, Filippo Fanciotti | June 2026
Content
The celebrated map of Rome engraved by Giovanni Battista Nolli in 1748 forms the basis of the graphic palimpsest on which, year after year and layer after layer, students at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne have accumulated the urban visions derived from Thomas More’s Utopia, Tommaso Campanella’s Civitas Solis, and Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis. The architectures and places described in these three major works of Renaissance utopian literature provide the point of departure for a reflection on the relationship between text and image, and more specifically on the problematic and differentiated correspondence between literary descriptions of various possible ideal societies and contemporary visions and representations of the city.
Rome, the composite, syncretic, and multifarious city par excellence, presents itself as a concrete field in which elements heterogeneous in material, form, and function find a precise inscription in space. Upon this topographic base unfolds a figurative promenade in which urban fragments drawn in plan are translated into views and accumulated as imaginary memories within a drawing cabinet. The spirit of utopian literature, visionary and abstract by nature, is thus adopted as the point of departure for constructing a possible image of the city. The method consists in translating texts into architectural figures, themselves composed from forms and fragments drawn from the repertoires of architectural history and pictorial art. These figures are then translated into images through the composition of perspectival views in the manner of plausible capricci.
The first phase consists of a comparative reading of the three foundational works of the utopian genre. From Utopia, Civitas Solis, and New Atlantis are extracted the indications that orient the drawing: places, buildings, infrastructures, and constructed forms of collective life. The text thus becomes the principle of a figurative narrative.
The second phase involves a construction by analogy. The descriptions of ideal cities are placed in relations of affinity with forms drawn from reality: plans, architectural types, fragments from treatises, and images from the figurative tradition. Analogy makes it possible to identify, within this repertoire, plausible figures capable of giving form to literary images and inscribing them within a recognizable, possible, and coherent urban structure.
The third phase concerns the level of metaphor and allegory. The architectures constructed in this way render visible an idea of the city and of society: the composition acquires a symbolic character in which each element participates in a broader discourse that exceeds its own meaning. Rome, through its stratified structure and the coexistence of heterogeneous parts, becomes the concrete model of a construction by fragments, in which form arises from the continuous accumulation of successive additions and the cyclical reconfiguration of what already exists.
The drawing operation is defined through these three fundamental phases. The topographic plan of the built fabric and its monuments constitutes the support on which fragments are inserted, superimposed, and recomposed through techniques of collage and assemblage. Within this process, the relationship between urban morphology and architectural type emerges as a unifying principle: analogy and allegory determine the selection and meaning of forms, while practices of additive composition govern their disposition within the structure of the city.
The celebrated map of Rome engraved by Giovanni Battista Nolli in 1748 forms the basis of the graphic palimpsest on which, year after year and layer after layer, students at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne have accumulated the urban visions derived from Thomas More’s Utopia, Tommaso Campanella’s Civitas Solis, and Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis. The architectures and places described in these three major works of Renaissance utopian literature provide the point of departure for a reflection on the relationship between text and image, and more specifically on the problematic and differentiated correspondence between literary descriptions of various possible ideal societies and contemporary visions and representations of the city.
Rome, the composite, syncretic, and multifarious city par excellence, presents itself as a concrete field in which elements heterogeneous in material, form, and function find a precise inscription in space. Upon this topographic base unfolds a figurative promenade in which urban fragments drawn in plan are translated into views and accumulated as imaginary memories within a drawing cabinet. The spirit of utopian literature, visionary and abstract by nature, is thus adopted as the point of departure for constructing a possible image of the city. The method consists in translating texts into architectural figures, themselves composed from forms and fragments drawn from the repertoires of architectural history and pictorial art. These figures are then translated into images through the composition of perspectival views in the manner of plausible capricci.
The first phase consists of a comparative reading of the three foundational works of the utopian genre. From Utopia, Civitas Solis, and New Atlantis are extracted the indications that orient the drawing: places, buildings, infrastructures, and constructed forms of collective life. The text thus becomes the principle of a figurative narrative.
The second phase involves a construction by analogy. The descriptions of ideal cities are placed in relations of affinity with forms drawn from reality: plans, architectural types, fragments from treatises, and images from the figurative tradition. Analogy makes it possible to identify, within this repertoire, plausible figures capable of giving form to literary images and inscribing them within a recognizable, possible, and coherent urban structure.
The third phase concerns the level of metaphor and allegory. The architectures constructed in this way render visible an idea of the city and of society: the composition acquires a symbolic character in which each element participates in a broader discourse that exceeds its own meaning. Rome, through its stratified structure and the coexistence of heterogeneous parts, becomes the concrete model of a construction by fragments, in which form arises from the continuous accumulation of successive additions and the cyclical reconfiguration of what already exists.
The drawing operation is defined through these three fundamental phases. The topographic plan of the built fabric and its monuments constitutes the support on which fragments are inserted, superimposed, and recomposed through techniques of collage and assemblage. Within this process, the relationship between urban morphology and architectural type emerges as a unifying principle: analogy and allegory determine the selection and meaning of forms, while practices of additive composition govern their disposition within the structure of the city.
Finally, the reference to Giulio Carlo Argan’s Roma interrotta guides both the method and the operative approach. The archaeological nature of Rome demands, above all, a formal understanding in which fragmentation appears both as an essential condition of the contemporary city and as an instrument for confronting the possibility of its design. Giulio Carlo Argan observes that Rome becomes “interrupted” as soon as one ceases to imagine it and confines oneself to planning it. Hence the need for a reversal through which imagination makes it possible to conceive the city once again as a living and timeless repertoire upon which the act of design can and must be exercised anew.
Contributions :
Étudiants de Visions et Utopies 2018-2025
Commissaires d’exposition :
Reda Berrada, Nicola Braghieri, Filippo Cattapan, Filippo Fanciotti
Conception et réalisation :
Reda Berrada, Nicola Braghieri, François Burus, Filippo Cattapan, Filippo Fanciotti, Louis Fillistorf, Antoine Kientz, Cyril Mananga Matala-Tala
Remerciements :
EPFL – Invités aux discussions et conférenciers – Elisa Boeri, Giovanni Galli, Livia Lupi, Christoph Greffe, Giacomo Pala, Dirk Somers, Léa-Catherine Szacka
ENSASE – Soutien et coordination – Cédric Libert Jessica Auroux
Impression et supports graphiques :
Reprographie EPFL, Atelier Maquette
SAR - EPFL epfl.ch/labs/lapis
© 2026 EPFL - ENAC - SAR - IA - LAPIS
