Welcome!

Zoe, Olivera and Liga are Canadian intern architects in their late 20s. Zoe and Liga are currently living and working in New York, and Olivera is the Quebecois correspondent, based in Montreal.

Zoe started this blog in 2020 because she was annoyed with travel advice that sends you to a museum or monument crowded with a million other tourists. She wanted to produce city guides which provide an experience that is authentic to someone who lives in that place. And guides which can be used by people who may not have $30 to spend on an exotic cocktail. Over time she realized that her favourite trips have always been ones where she strayed off the beaten path and didn’t worry about ticking off some list of the main attractions.

The blog section of this website contains their findings on a search for an authentic, inspiring, healthy and satisfying life in the 2020s. We believes truth exists most purely in creative explorations of life, of the world etc.  And this site was created to document her search for what’s real and true in a world where we are constantly bombarded with fake and false.

The name of this website was inspired by the Situationist method called “The Derive” - a method for wandering aimlessly through a city and discovering new places, people and experiences. The name of this website nods to the Situationist Guy Debord’s “The Naked City”. A map which displays cut up pieces of a plan of Paris randomly placed back together to encourage people to wander through the city in new ways.

We hope this website will help you to explore corners of the world, corners of your own city even that haven’t been explored before. After living in a few different cities ourselves, we have become fascinated by the way your perception of a city is greatly influenced by the dynamic, constantly changing elements* within it. We are interested in comparing different peoples experiences of the same places, because they can be so remarkably different! 

- The Naked Atlas Team

 *the guy who nods at you as he smokes a hand rolled cigarette on his front stoop every morning. The broken street lamp. The fish store that can be smelled from a mile away.