What Guides Us

Divisare exists to offer you the ideal tool with which to organize your knowledge of contemporary architecture. We celebrate contemporary architecture throug his lengthy, patient work of cataloguing, done by hand: image after image, project after project, publication after publication.

Slow web

Architecture is perceived in haste, in the midst of lots of hype and lots of distractions. We are constantly urged to go elsewhere, to do something else. Click me. Like me. Tweet me. Share me. Too much noise. It’s impossible to concentrate. Basta!
Divisare is based on the certainty that it is possible to do better than the speedy, distracted web we all know, where the prevailing business model is: “you make money only if you manage to distract your readers from the content of your site itself.” This is why divisare is a place to perceive architecture slowly, without distractions. No "click me," "tweet me," "share me,” "like me." No advertising, banners, pop-ups or other noise that can disturb concentration. A different idea of the web, which we might call “slow web.”

First of all, the readers

We believe it is our responsibility to maintain the highest standards, putting the priority on our readers because it is thanks to them (they pay our bills) that divisare can be a sustainable publishing initiative. Therefore every decision we make is done on the basis of consideration of the interests of our readers.

Proudly independent

The selection of the authors and projects we publish is exclusively based on the value we think they can have for our readers. We never accept payment, in any form, for the promotion of products, projects or design studios. Any form of advertising is completely banned from our website.

In praise of the bookshelf

Our idea is to step aside from the sort of web that is condemned to exist in terms of vertical communication, always with the newest of the new architecture placed at the top, “on the front page,” “in the spotlight.” Content that is destined – like the oh-so-new architecture that preceded it, just a few hours earlier – to rapidly slide down lower, day after day, in a vertical free fall towards the oblivion of page 2. Therefore we built divisare horizontally, not vertically. Our model is the bookcase, on whose shelves we have gathered hundreds of publications by theme. Each publication narrates a particular story, a specific vantage point from which to observe the last 20 years of contemporary architecture.

Knowledge vs. information

Instead of a quick, distracted web, we want a slow, attentive one. Instead of hastily perused information, we prefer knowledge calmly absorbed. This is why we love to publish books and to offer you a space free from the relentless noise of advertising.

Back to paper

In April 2016 we began to publish the divisare books. An initial, very small step outside the web. The contents were varied, but mostly the same things we were posting on the web. The idea was simple: printed paper instead of pixels. We certainly didn’t expect to make money; we simply wanted to invite our readers to get away from the screens of their devices for a moment, to sit back in a favorite armchair and enjoy a good read, as happened in the past. We were not kidding ourselves; of course our divisare books would not be a smashing publishing success, but we didn’t care. We decided to do it anyway. But we were mistaken. The first divisare books sold out in just a few weeks.