The idea is to create a spatial device that will help visitors see architecture through different eyes, relying on the persuasive effect offered by a museum display that is not dedicated to architecture, as is the case at Pirelli HangarBicocca. Without compensating for the lack of “real architecture” with surrogates such as drawings, texts, photos, models, and so on – as is usually the case – here the architecture is shown “live”. The aim is to help people discover its unique artistic qualities, and visitors are invited to go beyond their usual, purely practical experience of architecture.

In the “Shed” building 15 works specially created for the exhibition are arranged to form a sort of atlas, illustrating the themes and subjects involved in the new responsibilities of architecture in the twenty-first century. The Atlas, at once the draft of an archive and the outline of a map, appears in an arrangement of objects in the unified space of a parterre, alluding to the beginning of new actions and ways of being. This mapping, which as a matter of principle excludes any hierarchy, centre or order of significance, reflects the desire to offer an open encyclopaedia. The utopia of the exhibition is to consider a possible field of hyperlinks, extolling the principle of diversity as an open system that can be freely and infinitely accessed by all.