Architizer has become a staple of the architecture community over the site’s five-year history, with hundreds of thousands of active visitors, a collection of over fifty thousand projects and a distinct editorial and curatorial voice. With the site redesign, Type/Code saw an opportunity to rethink Architizer’s community features, migrate its wealth of content into a fresh database and build a refined information architecture from the ground up.

“Since we had such great imagery from the beginning of the process, we tried to focus on designing a system that would do the image-heavy content justice in whatever context it is being showcased—from larger retina displays down to smartphones,” says Zeke Shore, founder and creative director of Type/Code. Many pages display content that can be “infinitely scrolled” and searched, sorted and filtered by a number of criteria. Since these pages need to display dozens upon dozens of images, media assets are loaded only when they are needed. The site hosts multiple sizes of each image, and only loads the most appropriate version for the user’s device and the section of the site being viewed.

The redesigned Architizer needed to strike the right balance between an editorialized browsing experience and a deep database of projects and products. The site caters to multiple audiences, from firms showcasing their work to enthusiasts browsing for inspiration to brands highlighting how their products are being used, so it needs to work as well for someone skimming the latest featured projects as it does for someone searching, filtering and sorting to find every green roof in Brooklyn. The redesign has succeeded on all fronts: Unique visitors and page views have increased by over 50 percent, and total engagement time has quadrupled.