A portfolio that sells the space before the first visit

The challenge

Halden Architects had won two national awards in three years, yet their website still looked like the template they launched with in 2016. Project pages were a single gallery and a paragraph of text. Prospective clients told the partners they had almost not called because the site did not match the quality of the buildings.

Updating anything meant emailing a freelancer and waiting a week. As a result, the newest and best work was missing entirely.

Our approach

We spent the first two weeks in the studio, interviewing partners, project architects and three recent clients. One pattern stood out: people hired Halden for how they think about light and landscape, not for a style. The site needed to tell that story project by project.

• A content model built around projects, places and ideas rather than pages
• An editorial layout system with full-bleed photography and long-form captions
• A light, typographic brand refresh that lets the buildings lead

The solution

Every project is now a story with chapters: the site, the brief, the idea and the result. The team adds new projects in the Studio in under an hour, with Visual Editing showing each change in context before it goes live.

For the first time, the website explains why our buildings look the way they do.

The results

Six months after launch, qualified enquiries were up 64 percent and the average visitor spent three times longer on project pages. Two of the studio’s largest commissions this year started with a contact form submission that quoted a project page word for word.

What is next

We are now working with Halden on a journal of short essays about materials and craft, published monthly by the team itself.