Architecture is fundamentally about storytelling—about place, context, materiality, and the relationship between built form and human experience. Yet many architecture practice websites reduce this rich narrative to a grid of hero images and a handful of bullet points. The result is a portfolio that might look impressive at first glance but fails to communicate the depth, complexity, and intentionality behind the work.

The practices whose websites genuinely succeed understand that every project represents months or years of thinking, iteration, collaboration, and problem-solving. Their digital presence reflects this reality. It gives each project the space to breathe, to explain itself, to reveal its layers. These sites don't just show buildings—they communicate architectural thinking.

Most architecture websites follow a predictable formula: a striking homepage image, a grid of project thumbnails, and individual project pages with a gallery of professional photography and minimal text. This approach treats the website as a visual catalog rather than a storytelling medium.

The limitations become apparent when you consider what's missing. Where is the explanation of site constraints and how they shaped the design? Where is the discussion of material choices and their relationship to context? Where is the narrative that connects initial concept to finished building? Without these elements, even exceptional projects can appear one-dimensional.

This shallow presentation does the work a disservice, but it also undersells the practice itself. Architecture is a complex, multifaceted discipline that involves problem-solving, collaboration, technical expertise, and creative vision. When a website reduces all of this to pretty pictures, it suggests—incorrectly—that aesthetics are the only thing that matters.

The issue is often one of structure rather than intent. Many practices want to tell these stories, but their website platform makes long-form content cumbersome to manage, or their site structure treats every project identically regardless of its scale or significance. The system itself becomes a constraint rather than an enabler.

Architecture projects are rarely simple. Even a modest residential extension involves site analysis, planning considerations, structural engineering, material selection, contractor coordination, and countless design decisions. Communicating this complexity requires more than a photo gallery.

The most effective project pages we've worked on create space for genuine narrative. Rather than forcing every project into the same template, the content structure allows each to be presented according to its own needs.

Some projects might foreground process and methodology, showing how design thinking evolved from initial site visits through multiple iterations to the final built form. Others might emphasize technical innovation, explaining new construction methods or sustainable approaches. Still others might focus on context and landscape, particularly for projects where relationship to site is paramount.

This flexibility requires a content management system designed for architectural thinking rather than retrofitted from blog software. When we work with practices on their websites, the technical infrastructure is built to accommodate detailed project information—location, client, collaborators, timeline, typology, scale—without this metadata becoming burdensome to manage or cluttering the public-facing pages.

The structure also needs to support complex relationships between projects. An architecture practice's work doesn't exist in isolated silos. Projects connect thematically (sustainable approaches, adaptive reuse, public infrastructure), typologically (residential, commercial, cultural), geographically, and chronologically. A good website makes these connections discoverable without overwhelming the visitor.

Architectural photography is essential, but it's not sufficient. Even the finest images can't fully communicate why a building took the form it did, how it responds to its surroundings, or what problems it solves. This is where thoughtful copywriting becomes crucial.

We often work with architectural copywriters as part of website projects because architecture practices, understandably, aren't usually set up to produce long-form written content about their own work. Architects are trained to communicate through drawings and models, not prose. Yet the written narrative is what transforms a gallery of images into a genuine case study.

Good architectural copy does several things simultaneously. It provides context—explaining the site, the brief, the constraints. It reveals thinking—describing the conceptual approach and how it influenced specific design decisions. It acknowledges collaboration—crediting engineers, landscape architects, contractors, and other consultants. And it explains outcomes—what the building achieves for its users and its context.

This narrative depth is particularly important for practices working on complex typologies—infrastructure, adaptive reuse, masterplanning—where the architectural thinking might not be immediately apparent from images alone. A timber footbridge might look elegant in photographs, but understanding the sustainability considerations, the integration with landscape, and the engineering innovation requires explanation.

The challenge is integrating this written content with imagery in a way that enhances rather than interrupts the experience. Nobody wants to read an essay before seeing the project. The design needs to allow images and text to work together, with the narrative unfolding alongside the visual story rather than competing with it.

Architecture practices accumulate work across diverse project types, scales, locations, and stages of completion. A single practice might have residential projects alongside major infrastructure, built work alongside ongoing commissions, local projects alongside international ones. Making this breadth navigable without creating chaos is a genuine design challenge.

The standard solution—a simple chronological list or basic category filter—rarely serves practices well. Someone looking for expertise in conservation and retrofit doesn't want to scroll through housing projects to find relevant examples. An engineer seeking a collaboration partner for timber structures needs to quickly identify projects demonstrating that capability.

Craft CMS excels at this kind of sophisticated content organisation. Unlike WordPress, which fundamentally remains a blogging platform extended awkwardly into other uses, Craft is built from the ground up to handle complex, multi-dimensional content relationships. You can create organizational systems that reflect how the practice actually thinks about its work, rather than forcing the work into predetermined categories.

This might mean projects can be filtered by typology, but also by architectural approach, by sustainability credentials, by project status, by scale. The same project can legitimately belong to multiple categories—a house extension that's also an exemplar of adaptive reuse and contemporary craft. The system understands these overlapping taxonomies without requiring awkward workarounds or maintenance-heavy plugin stacks.

The technical advantage here isn't abstract—it directly affects whether potential clients can find relevant work. If a developer looking for housing expertise can't easily filter to residential projects, or a local authority seeking infrastructure design can't quickly identify relevant experience, the website has failed in its fundamental purpose.

Architecture practices work with professional photographers, and rightly so—architectural photography is its own specialized discipline. But even excellent photography can feel disconnected if the website doesn't present it coherently.

This is partly about image galleries and how they're structured. Architecture projects generate hundreds of photographs—exteriors, interiors, details, contextual views. Not all of these should appear in the online portfolio, but those that do should be presented in a way that builds understanding rather than simply offering quantity.

More fundamentally, it's about how photography relates to the overall project narrative. Images should reinforce and illustrate the written story, not exist separately from it. When describing how a building responds to its landscape, that's when you show the contextual photographs. When discussing material choices, that's when detail shots become meaningful.

We also work with architectural photographers as part of the broader consultation process for practice websites. This isn't just about commissioning new images—though that's sometimes necessary—but about understanding what visual story the practice wants to tell and whether the existing photography supports that narrative. Sometimes minor reshoots or additional detail shots can significantly strengthen a project's online presentation.

The technical side matters too. Architectural photography is typically high-resolution, which creates performance challenges if not handled properly. Images need to look exceptional—these are practices whose work should be shown at its finest—but the site also needs to load quickly and work smoothly. This requires thoughtful image optimization and intelligent loading strategies, not just compressing everything indiscriminately.

Architecture practices understand that design and construction should be integrated rather than sequential. The same principle applies to website development. When design and technical build happen in silos, the result is invariably compromised—either the design's ambitions exceed what can be implemented, or the technical possibilities aren't fully explored during the design phase.

Our studio works with design and development in-house, which means these disciplines inform each other throughout the project. Design concepts can be tested and refined as the build progresses. If a particular interaction or layout presents technical challenges, we can adapt the approach early rather than discovering limitations at the end. Conversely, development capabilities can inspire design directions that wouldn't have been considered in a purely visual mockup phase.

This integrated approach particularly benefits architecture websites because they typically require custom functionality—sophisticated filtering systems, flexible project page layouts, custom image galleries, thoughtful navigation through complex content hierarchies. These aren't features you can implement with off-the-shelf themes or standard plugins. They need to be designed and built as unified solutions.

The practical advantage is a site that genuinely works for both the practice and its visitors. The practice gets a content management system that makes sense for architectural content, not a blogging platform they're fighting against. Visitors get an experience that helps them understand the work, not a maze of poorly organized projects.

A website project for an architecture practice isn't just about design and development. It's about understanding the work, the audience, and what the practice is trying to communicate. This means looking at everything—the projects themselves, the existing photography, the written content, the organizational logic—rather than just applying a visual template.

When we work with practices, the consultation typically involves architectural copywriters to develop project narratives, photographers if new or additional images are needed, and close collaboration with the practice to understand how they think about their work and how they want it understood by others. The design process then responds to this understanding rather than imposing a predetermined aesthetic.

This holistic approach isn't standard in web development, but it should be for architecture practices whose work represents years of careful, considered thinking. The website is the primary way most people will encounter that work. It deserves the same attention to craft, detail, and integration that the practice brings to its buildings.

Craft CMS supports this approach because it's genuinely flexible without being chaotically open-ended. You can structure content to match the specific needs of an architecture practice without either accepting rigid templates or building everything from scratch. The system grows and adapts as the practice evolves, accommodating new project types or organizational approaches without requiring a complete rebuild.

An effective architecture practice website achieves several things simultaneously. It showcases the work beautifully, obviously, but it also communicates the thinking behind that work. It organizes complex portfolios in ways that serve both casual browsers and serious prospects. It gives each project the appropriate level of detail—more for significant commissions, less for smaller works—without forcing everything into identical templates.

Most importantly, it positions the practice accurately. If the practice's strength is sustainable infrastructure, the site should make that immediately clear. If the work spans radically different scales—from house extensions to masterplanning—the site should help visitors understand this breadth rather than creating confusion.

The best practice websites we've developed demonstrate these principles in action. Projects are organized thematically and typologically. Each project page provides genuine narrative depth—explaining concepts, context, and approach—supported by high-quality photography. The sites work for multiple audiences: potential clients assessing relevant experience, collaborators exploring the practice's approach, and general visitors interested in architecture.

This isn't about complexity for its own sake. It's about creating a digital presence that does justice to sophisticated architectural work—that gives projects the space to explain themselves, that makes complex portfolios navigable, and that communicates architectural thinking rather than just showing finished buildings.

The question for architecture practices isn't whether they can afford this level of care in their website—it's whether they can afford not to. In an increasingly digital world, the website is often the first and sometimes only impression potential clients have of the practice. A superficial site suggests superficial thinking. A thoughtful, well-executed site suggests the opposite.

Your work deserves better than a template and a photo grid. The question is whether your website reflects that.