The Problem With Architecture Web Sites
Zaha Hadid's web site is a good example..
Ok, we promise this is our last link to AN contributor Alissa Walker’s Fast Company posts for a while. But this one is definitely worth it. The other day she focused on a subject we’ve been pondering for a long time: how despite their design expertise, most architects’ sites aren’t very good. Many, she points out, overuse gimmicks and make finding information and projects way too difficult. Sites for Jean Nouvel, Zaha Hadid, Renzo Piano, Rem Koolhaas’ OMA, she says, are all completely Flash-reliant (a no-no in the new i-Phone, i-Pad world) and “use label-less maps, wordless grids, sketches and other graphic devices with rollovers as navigation, with no easy way to locate or share projects.” One site that we at AN find particularly confusing is that of Lorcan O’Herlihy (one of our favorite architects, by the way), which puts projects into a grid that resembles the Periodic Table of the elements. Sure, it looks great, but.. Well, you get the idea.
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i used to think the same about zaha’s site, until i saw this:
http://zahahadid.vm.bytemark.co.uk/
it actually kind of epitomizes what you are talking about, this website works like a blog and each project is a post.
i think the main problem is that she never redirected her main site to here!
their sites are a direct reflection of their work, confusing and a pain in the ass the maintain, nothing more than eye candy
Have you also noticed that most architects’ websites are “dead”? Interesting to visit once, but they are updated so rarely (if at all) that there’s no reason to go back. I think a blog type format or section, where new things are frequently posted and the writing is more personal, is much more suited to architects’ sites.
Simple web design is going out of style. There’s a sea of change going on in the world of web design and web site architecture is one of the great changes. We enjoy creating sites with complex web site architecture so that it can be presented to the visitor in a user-friendly way with content management systems Drupal and Joomla. Our site is http://www.datascribe.biz/.