In this essay, I consider architect Andrea Branzi’s speculative urban-territorial scheme from the mid-1990s called Agronica, in which he explored the possibilities of the postindustrial paradigm.

I discuss the theoretical and ontological basis for his rejection of the urban setting of conventional industry and subsequent gravitation toward the extraurban atmosphere of the geo-economic region known as the Third Italy. I also acknowledge an intriguing paradox embedded in the project, in which the socially liberating qualities of the spatial systems he explored were equally associated with the territorial behaviors of advanced capitalism—a duality seemingly at odds with Branzi’s historical commitments.

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