The best architecture websites bridge the divide between form and function, serving as digital canvases to beautifully and effectively portray the work while encouraging immersion in the architect’s world.

But crafting this online space requires careful choices — subtle typography and color schemes, clear navigation, and emphasis on architectural imagery should mirror the architect’s work, underscoring their creativity and competence. And adhering to enterprise web design standards, like robust security, responsive design, and accessibility, guarantees a user-friendly experience.

By fusing visually compelling content and user-focused design, you can cater to what architecture clients seek: stunning visuals, proven successes, and a transparent process. Here’s how 10 web designers helped architecture firms translate their design philosophies to the screen.

The 10 best architecture websites to spark ideas

If you’re gathering architecture website design ideas, these 10 sites are the perfect place to start. Each lets the visuals sing in the foreground while making subtle design choices in the background to harmonize with the firm’s distinctive style.

1. Studio MEMM

With a diverse portfolio including an adult treehouse and a glass-walled farm school in New York, the Brazilian architecture firm Studio MEMM showcases their various ingenious and innovative designs on their website. Web design agency Praia Design constructs individual pages for each project within the portfolio section that present large feature images supplemented with clear, engaging descriptions that outline each project’s primary motivations and challenges. Additional images, 3D renders, and finished development photos give visitors a comprehensive view of Studio MEMM’s work.

A unique aspect of the site’s design is a thumbnail of the next structure at the page’s end, along with its title and location. This feature allows continuous browsing, eliminating the need to return to the main portfolio page. It’s a user-focused design strategy that simplifies navigation, optimizes the user experience, and keeps visitors engaged — amplifying the firm’s online presence.

2. A&A

Thai architectural powerhouse Architects & Associates (A&A) leverages their landing page to cycle through beautiful 3D renders of their major developments. This visual narrative gives visitors an immediate grasp of the monumental scale of these buildings, capturing and piquing interest. On the dedicated projects page, visitors can filter A&A’s work by type, such as commercial, residential, and recreational, enabling a more personalized and relevant exploration of the firm’s portfolio.

A dedicated page for each project features a blend of renders, photos, and crucial project details. This information encompasses the client, location, construction cost, area, and completion date, offering a holistic view of each. Disclosing cost and size data serves a dual purpose: It reassures potential large-scale clients of the firm’s capacity to manage sizable, high-budget endeavors and fosters transparency. This strategic approach builds trust and bolsters the firm’s credibility, which is instrumental in attracting and retaining prospective clients.

If you want to create a similar page, 89Studio Agency Design has made theirs freely cloneable, so you’re welcome to use it as a template for your client’s site.

3. PROCAD Designs

Canada’s PROCAD Designs combines traditional and modern architecture styles to tailor-make new homes and renovate existing ones. KHULA design studio uses an innovative feature — the hero image slider — to add a layer of storytelling to the portfolio. Instead of showing a series of different works, this slider transitions from sketch to render to the final photo within a single project. This allows visitors to watch the development gradually take shape, which fosters deeper engagement. A manual toggle enhances interactivity, allowing users to spend more time on stages that interest them.

The PROCAD Designs site also includes a Canadian architecture blog featuring news and evergreen topics like energy efficiency and a beginners’ guide to home renovations. Maintaining a blog has several advantages: It fosters return traffic to the site by offering fresh and valuable content and is an effective search engine optimization (SEO) tool. The well-maintained blog enhances the architecture site’s search engine rankings, attracts organic website traffic, and boosts online visibility for PROCAD Designs.

4. Felicity Christian

Felicity Christian, an architect based in New Zealand, specializes in residential homes and local Māori community developments. Her architecture portfolio website, created by design agency PDC Creative, cleverly places the first two words of a sentence above the fold, prompting users to scroll down. As users navigate the site, passing various building examples, they uncover a compelling narrative: “From concept ... to design ... to fruition.”

The designers also employ an interactive zoom-in animation on select photos, providing an immersive experience akin to a virtual tour. These subtle interactive features enhance user engagement and provide a dynamic, in-depth display of the firm’s projects. Implementing them is a strategy that captures interest and keeps users exploring the site.

5. Archunion

Ukrainian architecture workshop Archunion follows a similar design approach to A&A by using captivating 3D-rendered hero images to display their projects. For users that desire a more detailed view of each architectural design, a convenient “hover to pause” button offers control over the image carousel rotation.

Further enhancing the user experience, Apex Band, the design team behind this website, employs glassmorphism for its menu bar and buttons to inject a touch of modern elegance into the overall site design. Vibrant light-pink and blue gradients for page transitions add a lively contrast to the darker renders.

6. SMP Architecture

Dylan Spencer’s website for Pensacola-based SMP Architecture opens with an immersive, full-page drone video. This journey takes visitors to the sea before seamlessly transitioning to a showcase of SMP-designed buildings. Potential clients get a tangible sense of the spatial and environmental context, which is crucial to the visual field of architecture.

The site’s navigation bar links to a press page that showcases local news articles about the firm’s projects. For any architecture firm that regularly features in the press, a press page offers engaging content for visitors to read and reinforces the firm’s reputation by showcasing third-party validation of their work.

7. Blackbox Architectonics

Blackbox Architectonics exhibits the work of Greek architect Evita Pothitaki, who creates minimalist designs for seaside apartments and public works. Tasked with translating Evita’s freelance brand into a new site for a remote collaborative studio, the web design team at Reform Digital implemented a refined and understated design approach. Using a black-and-white color palette, subtle geometric background patterns, and varying weights of the sleek sans-serif font Montserrat presents a clean aesthetic that resonates with Evita’s architectural style.

By following this strategy, Reform Digital focuses user attention on the architectural designs. Their design choices make for an easy-to-navigate interface, reducing the cognitive load for users. The intuitive navigation also allows potential clients to discover and connect with Evita’s work smoothly, increasing the chance of potential collaborations.

Blackbox Architectonics’ homepage design is particularly striking with its all-caps headers, darkened hero image, and on-point copy that invites users to discover more by scrolling down.

8. 988

988 design studio’s work spans graphic design, interior design, branding, infographics, and architecture. The grid-style landing page showcases each selection, with one square reserved for a written introduction to the studio. The studio’s unique flair is playfully incorporated into the top navigation menu, where cryptic icons, upon hover, disclose their labels — graphics, architecture, digital, and products. On the bottom of each page, an unobtrusive sticky footer links to various social media platforms, including Instagram, LinkedIn, and Behance.

9. Reload Architecture

Like many other sites on the list, Lorenzo Faroldi’s design for Italian architecture firm Reload Architecture employs full-screen images to display its designs optimally. The distinctively bright color palette of yellow and blue creates a welcoming summer ambiance that harmonizes with the firm’s open, airy designs. However, the thoughtful inclusion of their buildings in everyday use — with people and pets illustrating real-life occupancy — sets this site apart. This bridges the gap between aesthetic and function, highlighting the architecture firm’s philosophy of tailoring spaces to fit their physical and cultural contexts while respecting and preserving the environment.

10. Gary Todd Architecture

Gary Todd Architecture’s New Zealand-based architecture team asked Lucy Eru to redesign their site and specifically requested that she highlight the design work more prominently and enhance the overall user experience. Working under a time constraint, Lucy used a Webflow template to accelerate the process. She employs a dense 4-by-4 photo grid on the projects page, minimizing white space and cleverly forming a visual mosaic of the firm’s work to amplify their distinctive boxy aesthetic. It also improves the user experience by offering a consolidated, quick overview of the portfolio to showcase the firm’s design style.

Design a stunning digital home for your client with Webflow

Architecture design websites are image-heavy, so test and optimize the site’s performance before launch. This helps avoid high page load times and bounce rates.

Webflow’s fluency in handling images makes it an excellent choice for architecture designs. The drag-and-drop interface fosters a seamless workflow and allows for free experimentation with size and placement. The Designer tool automatically creates clean CSS and HTML code as you build the site, preventing code bloat that impedes site performance.

If you’re working against the clock or want to keep investigating site layouts, browse our architecture or real estate templates that are designed to show off images of buildings and interiors.