Thomas More’s book Utopia marks the beginning of a 500-year tradition of utopian thinking within architecture: so-called ‘paper architecture’. The design of the ideal city or society does not aspire to realisation. Utopia exists only on paper, and belongs there. Yet utopia is one of the most effective tools for questioning our society and introducing new ideas.

Thomas More situates Utopia on an island. That figure was not chosen by chance. The island is the idyll of an inside without an outside. The radical organisation of society can only maintain itself in isolation, free from external influences. The island is a metaphor for purity and perfection, but it is also a prison and a totalitarian system.

The exhibition questions the critical capacity of utopia and architecture as utopian practice. Can utopian thinking still be relevant today? What would a utopia look like that opens up to the other and the strange? Can we still situate utopia on a pristine island? And isn’t good architecture always a bit utopian?

Thomas More’s 500-year-old book is still amazingly topical. The exhibition starts from a close reading of the text and the questions it raises for the 21st century. Four teams of architects and an artists’ collective tackle these questions and hold up a mirror to today's Europe. EUtopia is literally ‘paper architecture’: all installations are executed in paper and tenuous materials.