UTOPIA
UTOPIA is a biennial ideas competition for architecture students, launched in 2022 to mark the centenary of Itten+Brechbühl. In partnership with the Swiss Architecture Museum (S AM), it serves as a platform for bold, socially engaged, and architecturally grounded visions that address the urgent questions of our time.
Established to inspire the next generation of architects, UTOPIA invites participants to challenge dominant paradigms and imagine alternative futures. By encouraging speculative thinking anchored in design rigor, the competition contributes to a broader architectural discourse and promotes critical engagement with social and environmental change.
UTOPIA has evolved significantly since its inaugural edition. In 2026, some 60 submissions were received in response to the theme “NOW!”. The resulting diversity of perspectives sparked rich discussions, both among the jury and during the award ceremony.
Across all three editions, the jury has remained independent and multidisciplinary, bringing together experts in architecture, urban design, landscape architecture, the digital transformation of higher education, art, and architectural criticism. Since the second edition, the jury has also included a member of a younger generation.
Public lectures and panel discussions have further enriched the discourse surrounding each year’s theme. Organized as part of the competition launch and award ceremony, these events bring together practitioners and experts from related fields. This year’s panel discussion on “NOW!” featured prize winner Sibilla Pollini, jury member Yuma Shinohara, Curator at the Swiss Architecture Museum (S AM), and Zurich-based visual artist Valentin Rilliet.
These events play an important role in engaging the public and deepening discussion of the key questions raised by UTOPIA.
UTOPIA 2026 – NOW !
The third edition turns to a pressing question within contemporary architectural discourse: the urgency of architectural action in the present. How can architecture respond decisively – and responsibly – to the realities of today?
UTOPIA 2026
UTOPIA 2024 – LESS
The 2024 edition explored the theme “LESS” addressing the climate crisis through the lens of architectural sufficiency. Participants were encouraged to investigate the creative potential of reduction, simplicity, and restraint—not only as a response to scarcity, but as a path toward new design methodologies. The resulting proposals reflected a shift from utopia to what might be called “pragmatopia”: architecture that pairs vision with viability and engages today’s challenges with both clarity and wit.
UTOPIA 2024UTOPIA 2022 – FUTURE LEARNING
The inaugural theme, “Future Learning", took as its point of departure a built utopia from Itten+Brechbühl’s early history: the Muesmatt Institute in Bern, designed in 1928 by Otto Rudolf Salvisberg. Radically forward-thinking for its time, the building was developed in close collaboration with Salvisberg’s associate Otto Brechbühl, who would later become his partner. Revisiting this landmark, students were asked to rethink conventional educational spaces. Informed by digital transformation and the experience of the pandemic, they proposed new spatial models for decentralized, networked learning suited to the challenges of the 21st century.
UTOPIA 2022