An architecture firm website that explains the work as well as showing it

Three audiences, one site

A practice site is read by private clients considering an extension or a new house, by commercial clients and developers checking experience in a sector, and by consultants, contractors, competition panels and future staff. Each reads differently. Private clients want reassurance and process; commercial clients want relevant projects and scale; peers want the thinking. A short statement of what the practice does, for whom and where, followed by projects filtered by sector, serves all three without separate sites.

Project pages that tell a story

A grid of beautiful photographs isn't a project page. Each project should say what the brief was, what constraints shaped it and how the design answered them. Keep the facts consistent across projects so readers can compare:

Location and type

Town or region, and the building type: house extension, new-build home, school, workplace, retrofit.

Status

Completed, on site, with planning, or a competition entry. Be clear which images are photographs and which are visualisations.

The brief

Two or three sentences in plain language on what the client needed.

The response

The key moves: plan, light, materials, energy approach, how it sits in its context.

Credits

Client (with permission), photographer, structural engineer, contractor and other collaborators.

Kept in an Anticode CMS collection with those fields, each project gets its own page at its own address and the list page stays in order. Adding a finished project is a dashboard edit, not a rebuild. Upload your own photographs; credit the photographer on every image set.

Explaining the process

Most people commission an architect once in their life. They don't know what happens between the first meeting and the builder arriving, and that uncertainty stops enquiries. A process page with numbered stages helps: feasibility and brief, concept design, planning or permits, technical design, tender, construction, and handover. Many practices follow the staged framework their professional body publishes; if you do, use its stage names. For each stage, say what the client receives, what decisions they make and roughly how long it tends to take.

Being clear about fees

Few practices publish a fee scale, and that's reasonable. What helps is saying how fees are worked out (a fixed fee per stage, a percentage of construction cost, or hourly for early advice) and what the first step costs. A paid initial consultation or feasibility study, described clearly, filters enquiries better than a vague "get in touch". Note that other fees will follow, such as planning application fees, surveys and other consultants, so clients budget for them.

Consultation and enquiry

Offer two routes. A consultation slot, booked from Anticode's calendar, suits private clients ready to talk; it shows the coming days at six fixed times (Mondays skipped) and won't let two people book the same time; you confirm each one. An enquiry form suits everyone else and should collect a brief: the site address or area, the project type, rough budget, timescale, whether the property is listed or in a conservation area, and what prompted the project. Those can be prompts above a single message box, separate fields in a custom form tied to a site function (up to 30), or a form built as an app. Submissions can be emailed to you or sent on to Airtable, Notion or HubSpot through a connector.

Design: let the work lead

Architecture sites go wrong when the website tries to be a building: heavy animation, scroll-jacking, tiny grey text over photographs. The Swiss (Inter Tight) design system fits most practices, with a strict grid and generous space around images; Editorial (Geist) suits a practice that writes a lot. Anticode's Atelier Nord template is an architecture studio on a Swiss grid if you'd like a starting point to adapt. Published pages from the design engine carry no scripts, so they load quickly with large images and nothing breaks when a third-party service changes.

Limits

• No drawings portal or file sharing with clients. Use your project-sharing tool.
• No uploads in the enquiry form, so ask for drawings or photos by email.
• English only. A practice working across languages needs a different setup for translated pages.
• No comments or RSS on news posts kept in the CMS.

Questions people ask

What should an architect's project page include?

The location, building type, status, brief, design response and credits, with photographs and a clear note on which images are visualisations.

Should architects put fees on their website?

A fee scale isn't necessary, but explaining how fees are calculated and what the first step costs helps private clients decide to get in touch.

Can I update projects without a developer?

Yes. Projects kept in a CMS collection are edited from the dashboard, and other changes can be asked for in a sentence.