ВНИМАНИE PROHIBITED AREA
[2021] 

ANA MOREIRA
JÉSSICA TEIXEIRA
MARIA COSTA
NUNO VENTURA

In The City, published in 1915, the sociologist Robert E. Frank pointed out the importance of taking the city as a laboratory for the analysis of human nature. The main characteristics of a city would also be the identity and behavior of a society and its political system; the city would reveal to society the true nature of its values, interests and tensions. For a long time, the most radical procedure for closing a city was not to make it walled, fortified or isolated, but to remove it from the map. Внимание Prohibited Area - An Atlas of Soviet Controlled Cities is a project about the Soviet ZATO, cities used as pieces of a political chessboard in the context of the Cold War. It is fascinating how ZATO are almost an allegory of how a city can be taken as an instrument of political administration. Putting ZATOs on a map and making them the object of an Atlas is a setback to the isolation, enclosure and prohibition of these areas.

The Atlas of Soviet Controlled Cities aims to indulge the curiosity of those who find interest in the history and legacy of the soviet union. It emerges as an academic response to a multidisciplinary project within the scope of the information-driven design postgraduate course. The website prohibited-area.com represents one of two parts of the project, which also unfolds into a book.