Mapping Utopia as an Enclosed Renaissance Garden

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article presents previous attempts to map Utopia, a fictional island in the book Utopia by Thomas More, and proposes another possibility, based on the assumption that Utopia is an enclosed garden on an artificial island that is not flat, but has piedmont slopes of 2.5:1. Our mapping experiment is founded on the Renaissance analogy between the domestication of wild nature, and the civilization of the human beings in More’s enclosed garden; and on the anecdotal similarities between the Inca Empire and Utopia. This approach is not only consistent with the island’s dimensional specifications, which have hampered previous mapping attempts due to their mathematical incompatibility, but it also addresses the educative capacity of utopian life not considered by previous mapping efforts. Utopia, as a result, is to be understood as a series of performative spatial arrangements where the physical and geographical specifications would inform the vernacular life of its inhabitants in the direction of self-enhancement.