In mid-May 2020, the Institut Culturel d’Architecture Wallonie-Bruxelles (ICA), the Brussels Centre for Architecture and Landscape (CIVA) and the Flemish Architecture Institute (VAi) called on architects and spatial designers to rethink our built environment. The coronavirus crisis provided the impetus to reinterpret the notions of place and space, and to reflect on what the building blocks might signify in a new way of living together. Through an image and a short text, the designers responded to the key question: what form does today’s utopia take, which could become reality tomorrow?

More than 150 entries were received. These included proposals from a number of established architects, institutes, university lecturers and philosophers. Yet a large proportion of the entries came from a younger, as yet unknown generation of thinkers and doers.