Books
The Atlas of Hidden Architecture
There are marvels to be found in the corners of maps. “Here be dragons” was the warning on a Renaissance globe regarding the Pacific’s still unexplored coasts, in line with early cartographers’ custom of filling their maps with fantastic creatures existing beyond the known world, stoking people’s desire to explore further afield. A similar goal is pursued by a website set up in 2015 to explore architectures that lie in the outer limits of geography, but also of the canon.
Aware that any listing of works involves constructing a partial reality, the authors began to catalog buildings of different styles and periods, anonymous and not, with design value and original documents as the only constants of a plural approach. After half a thousand entries and the input of a community of readers, they added filters and a world map for situating the works named by the blog, making it easier to surf and marking areas that would otherwise stay blank, thus pointing out other fields of inquiry.
Now 33 articles of the heterogeneous atlas are compiled on paper, in just one of the infinite routes traceable online. Places the authors have visited or are familiar with, as stated in their chronicles. Such personal links to the destinations result in a selection that may seem random from outside – in what should be a highly ecumenical line-up, European buildings dominate, as do 20th-century works – but the book awakens interest in those terrae incognitae of the discipline, where fascinating experiences lie in wait, now as before.
