Squarespace has democratised web design, and that's genuinely a good thing. For many architecture practices—especially small studios or sole practitioners—it's an excellent starting point. The templates are beautiful, the interface is intuitive, and you can have a portfolio live in a weekend.

But architecture case studies aren't just about showing finished buildings. They're about telling the story of a project: the site constraints, the design response, the materiality, the collaboration. This requires a specific kind of content structure—clear project data, awards, press coverage, and carefully choreographed relationships between images and text. Template-based platforms like Squarespace struggle with this, not because they're poorly built, but because they weren't designed to solve this particular problem.

The result is that practices either force their work into rigid templates, or they end up with sites that look indistinguishable from their competitors. Neither is ideal when your portfolio is supposed to demonstrate how you approach design.

To be clear: Squarespace is excellent for certain practices. If you're a sole practitioner with 8-10 projects and straightforward presentation needs, it's probably the right choice. The templates are well-designed, hosting is reliable, and you can make changes yourself without developer support.

Where it excels:

• Quick setup with professional aesthetics
• Minimal technical knowledge required
• Affordable monthly cost
• Built-in mobile responsiveness

For practices in their first few years, or those who simply need an online presence without complexity, Squarespace delivers exactly what it promises.

Architecture case studies should tell a story. Not just "here's a building" but "here's the site, here's the challenge, here's our response, here's how it was built, here's what it achieved." This requires flexible content structure: sometimes you need full-width images, sometimes you need text alongside diagrams, sometimes you need to show process work, sometimes you need to highlight awards or press coverage.

Squarespace templates give you predetermined layouts. You can choose Template A or Template B, but you can't build a system that adapts to each project's specific narrative needs. The platform restricts you to rigid blocks that work the same way across all projects, regardless of whether you're presenting a small residential extension or a large commercial development.

Architecture is fundamentally about design thinking. Yet most Squarespace architecture sites look remarkably similar— because they're all working within the same template constraints. When your portfolio is meant to demonstrate how you approach spatial problems, materiality, and user experience, having a website that looks like everyone else's sends the wrong message.

Your work varies from project to project. A housing scheme requires different presentation from a conservation project. A competition entry needs different treatment from a completed build. A bespoke website can reflect these differences. A template cannot.

What architecture portfolios actually need is structured flexibility: a clear system for project data (location, size, year, collaborators, awards, press) combined with control over how images and text interact on each page.

Squarespace's page builder gives you blocks, but not this kind of structured system. You can't define consistent project information while also allowing presentation to vary by project. You're either locked into complete rigidity or manually rebuilding layouts for every case study—which defeats the purpose of having a content management system at all.

When we say "bespoke," we don't mean reinventing the wheel. We mean building a website system designed specifically around how your practice works and how your projects need to be presented.

A bespoke architecture website provides:

Structured project data
Clear fields for the information that matters: location, year, size, budget, awards, press, collaborators. This displays consistently across all projects, giving your portfolio professional structure.

Flexible storytelling
The ability to adapt presentation to each project's needs. One project might need large image sequences, another might prioritise drawings and diagrams, another might lead with a video walkthrough. The system supports all of these without forcing everything into the same layout.

Design that represents your practice
Your website should look and feel like your work. Not like a template, not like your competitors, but like a natural extension of your design thinking. Bespoke means the typography, layout, image treatment, and navigation are all considered specifically for how you want to present your practice.

A system you can manage
Bespoke doesn't mean complicated. A well-built custom website gives you a clear content system—add projects, update information, control how things display—without needing a developer for routine updates.

The honest answer: when the limitations start affecting how potential clients perceive your work.

This usually happens when:

• You find yourself forcing projects into layouts that don't suit them
• Your site looks too similar to other practices in your area
• You're spending hours fighting the platform to achieve basic layout needs
• Clients mention your site feels generic or doesn't reflect the quality of your built work
• You've grown beyond 15-20 projects and navigation becomes unwieldy

Squarespace serves a purpose. For practices in their early years, or those with straightforward needs, it's a sensible choice. But when your portfolio is a significant part of how you win work, and when how you present projects matters as much as the projects themselves, a bespoke solution stops being a luxury and becomes a practical necessity.

This isn't about Squarespace being bad. It's about fit. Template platforms are designed to serve the broadest possible audience, which means they can't solve the specific challenges of architecture portfolio presentation.

Architecture practices are bespoke businesses doing bespoke work. At a certain point, the website needs to reflect that.