Stratosferica, Utopian Hours 2026: some ideas grow when they meet

TLDR. On October 16, Pianeta.Studio was at Utopian Hours 2026 — Stratosferica’s city-making festival in Turin — with Bosco Colto as a conversation starter. We came back with contacts we hadn’t planned for, and one reminder: reciprocal curiosity doesn’t run out.

Stratosferica, Utopian Hours 2026: some ideas grow when they meet

How many times have you sat through a presentation knowing, five minutes in, that you won’t take anything home? That’s not a critique of the speakers — it’s a mechanism anyone who goes to industry events will recognise. Content interests people who are already interested. Questions come from people who already know the answers. The ritual repeats.

Utopian Hours is different for the same reason Stratosferica itself is different: it starts from the city as an open problem, not a brand. The people who show up work on concrete things — public space, community, territory, cultural production — and bring questions, not just answers.

We arrived in Turin on October 16 with Bosco Colto as a starting point. Not to present it: to use it as an entry point into conversations about what it means to build something that lasts. A campus in an oak forest in Caltagirone, run by Makramè APS, every summer, where architects and artists build physically — last edition left a wood-firing kiln in the courtyard of Casa Bosco Colto. The project is concrete, has a measurable history, and opens real questions about the Italian territory.

What we didn’t expect was how many people already knew it — or knew it within the first conversation, asking the right questions immediately: how does the selection work? who comes? is the Train Kiln already accessible to the public?

We were also struck by who we were meeting: @superterrestre, @incolto_studio, @theplacebureau, @museotam, @the_pop_theparadoxofpanda. Projects working at the intersection of space, community, and cultural production — each with its own angle. Nobody was selling anything. They were telling a story about a path they were on.

The most interesting conversations weren’t the ones we were looking for. They emerged sideways — from a project mentioned in passing, from a question about where we’re based, from a comparison of how an edition gets funded. Curiosity, when it’s reciprocal, creates connections that didn’t exist before.

If you want to understand what brings Bosco Colto into that kind of conversation — and why it’s a reference point for how we think about territory — the piece we published in September is the right place to start.

→ Bosco Colto 2026 — Thinking with Animals, building community

And if you want to talk about what we’re building together, Alba is here.

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Frequently asked questions

Was Pianeta.Studio at Stratosferica? Yes. On October 16, 2026, we were in Turin for Utopian Hours, Stratosferica’s city-making festival.

What did you present? Bosco Colto — a research and construction campus in an oak forest in Caltagirone, Sicily. We used it as a starting point for conversations about what it means to build something that lasts in Italian territory.

What is Bosco Colto? A campus in the forest near Caltagirone, run by Makramè APS. Every summer, architects, artists, and researchers build physical works alongside the local community. Last edition left the Train Kiln — a wood-firing kiln — in the courtyard of Casa Bosco Colto. Read the article.