Robert Metsch
European Central Bank
Frankfurt - Germany
Architecture by Coop Himmelb(l)au - Wolf D. Prix & Partner
With photos also by Paul Raftery
WHY ATLAS?
May be because we wanted to distinguish divisare from the web that is condemned to a sort of vertical communication, always with the newest architecture at the top of the page, as the "cover story," "the focus."
Content that was destined, just like the oh-so-new architecture that had just preceded it a few hours earlier, to rapidly slide down, day after day, lower and lower, in a vertical plunge towards the scrapheap of page 2.
So we began to build divisare not vertically, but horizontally.
Our model was the bookcase, on whose shelves we have gathered and continue to collect hundreds and hundreds of publications by theme. Every Collection in our Atlas tells a particular story, conveys a specific viewpoint from which to observe the last 25 years of contemporary architecture. A long, patient job of cataloguing, done by hand: image after image, project after project, post after post. Behind all this there is the certainty that we can do better than the fast, distracted web we know today, where the prevailing business model is: "you make money only if you manage to distract your readers from the contents of your own site." With divisare we want to offer the possibility, instead, of perceiving content without distractions. No "click me," "tweet me, "share me,” "like me." No advertising. banners, pop—ups or other distracting noise.
It is a different idea of the web, which we might call slow web.