The Third Atlas

Following on from Atlas of Forms, published in 2017, and the first 4 volumes of the Atlas des Régions Naturelles, The Third Atlas completes a trilogy of atlases focusing as much on architecture in the broadest sense as on images in their various modes of production and distribution. While the Atlas of Forms used the Internet as its main source, and the ARN explored the local realities of contemporary France, The Third Atlas proposes to experiment with artificial intelligence as a tool for representing reality.

In the form of a dystopian fable describing the world after the advent of AI, The Third Atlasgoes beyond the astonishment or rejection aroused by these images of a new kind. It is a reflection on the way in which artificial intelligence calls into question our way of seeing and, beyond that, our perception of the real, leading us to formulate the hypothesis that this modified vision will shape the future forms of architecture, but also of design, sculpture and painting, perhaps even more than those of photography.

The 660 images contained in the 320 pages of this book – one of the first of its kind – were created using artificial intelligence, and took over a thousand hours of work to complete.