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 20 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.
Completed by Paulo Mendes da Rocha in 2002, Praça do Patriarca is conceived as a floating steel canopy above the Prestes Maia Gallery.
Credits:
Estrutura estudos prévios: Fernando Stucchi
Projeto executivo: Maubertec Júlio Fruchtengarten
Análise dinâmica: Paulo Mattos Pimenta
Construção: fbs
Eduardo Colonelli, Kátia Pestana, Giancarlo Latorraca e Marcelo Laurino, estagiários: Luciana Itikawa e Martin Corullon