Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Internet?
For the most part, architects (either preternaturally or by self-proclamation) proudly emphasize their high esthetic levels, boasting good taste set right at the top of the designer pyramid. Their judgments and cognitive knowledge in creating real spaces should offer the user a highly sensory experience; they’re trained to design spaces easy to move around in. In any case, today architects design virtually everything, from cities to footwear. However, do they fare as well within the cyber space of their own presentations?
The old proverb says never judge a book by its cover, so by analogy, we shouldn’t judge architects by their websites. Right?
Some of the biggest names in architecture have for the longest time now been on the worst websites lists. For example, on Renza Piana’s site you’ll spend a good ten minutes until you discover the main menu, and then you’ll come up against painful navigation maneuvering along with sudden and unexpected pop-up windows surreptitiously lurking in the wings. Will Alsop is also on many a user-unfriendly list because of his use of Flash animation and a certain holistic description of architecture, thus you’ll be hard pressed to find any given concrete project, but you’ll nevertheless be showered with blessings. Probably the slowest download time of various project documents can be found on the pages of the New York office Diller, Scofidio+ Renfro, who just doesn’t get that time is money and that navigating their projects (once they actually do complete downloading) is kinetosis-inducing.
Judging by the six categories created by this New Zealand web studio as a sort of an SOS for designing architects’ websites, it all boils down to presenting the content, textual description of the projects, coherent categorization, selection of the color scheme and identity, adaptability to various resolutions, and last but not least, presenting one’s own work, as opposed to one’s own site. Since it sounds quite simple, why is it so complicated?
How our very own Croatian forces are muddling through cyberspace wilderness, to what extent do they follow web commandments and how they play fast and loose with Adobe Flash, the very same ones hailed last Saturday at the Gliptoteka as “representative, professionally valorized and important development units of contemporary Croatian architecture?”
3LHD: 3LHD emphasize the visual. On entry you’ll be greeted with a presentation of their projects, where they’ll further invite you to a highly systematic journey through the projects, typologically presented. Each project is accompanied by a textual annex, so a line of news, a bit of RSS feed influx. If everything would be this ideal in reality, Croatia would be the most organized country in the world. The design is by the outstanding NUMEN and we give our congratulations.
DVA PLUS: it seems they view architecture through rose-tinted glasses, as that’s what their visual identity is more or less like – decked out in overtones of pink, which is more befitting a cosmetics firm than an architectural practice. Then again, why not?
IGOR FRANIĆ- SZA: Franić loves Helvetica. What’s more, it seems like he loves it even more than his projects, to the point where his site, ordinarily quite clean-cut and well laid out, looks more like an endorsement of the font, where projects’ titles are at the forefront, and only besides them are these little barely visible images. The situation picks up a bit upon clicking on and entering each project individually. Still, Mr. Franić warrants a minus from us as the site flips back to the home page upon language changing.
IVANIŠIN-KABASHI: Is reminiscent of Memory Cards the children’s game where you get a half-second to memorize what’s hidden underneath various black squares. Yet again, Flash, with all its pros and cons, allowing countless interactions which grow tiresome after some time, especially if you’re looking for concrete information. Unfortunately, once you click in an attempt to enter a non-existent document on their page (which is known to happen), the system automatically returns you to the beginning.
NJIRIC+ ARHITEKTI: Their site could be dubbed ‘minimum design, maximum impact’. It’s exceptionally easy to navigate through the site of njiric+ arhitekts offices, regardless of the myriad information on it; you’ll get the information you’re looking for without much trouble. Still, it seems that nobody speaks Croatian in Njirić’s Office as there’s no trace of his mother tongue on the site.
PRODUKCIJA 004: Makes use of playful circlets in which project titles are placed, obviously an attempt to recreate the office’s logo. Finding one’s way around is fairly easy, but we’d still appreciate a more subtle esthetic of the transparent hybrid cube.
RANDIĆ-TURATO: The overall impression of their site could be described as somewhat industrial, charmingly punk-rock and yellow. They don’t recognize their mother tongue as well, and their presentations section has been reduced to a mere 5 selected projects. Reasons for failing to update?
STUDIO BIF: Warning! You are currently viewing a simplified site for which it’s necessary to install Flash… Google warns you before you enter their site. That which Google is really trying to warn you about is that once you enter their site, there’s no way out. Unexpected menus and presentation-shocks ensue. Their site is a clear example why we’re not big fans of Flash. You’ll get all the information you need in view of their projects, but after surfing their site you’ll probably come down with a mild case of epilepsy.
UPI 2M: Are you a morning or evening type? It seems that’s precisely what UPI 2M cares about, although the ‘why’ is quite unclear to us. When your menu looks like a ground plan, you have to admit you’re taking things a tad too far.
However, many Croatian architects are still afraid of the Internet, so many of them use a website as a large online business card (for example Studio UP, or Goran Rako’s Radionica arhitekture (Architectural Workshop), while some don’t even offer basic contact information. Maybe they consider that aspect of presenting their work unnecessary or don’t recognize the concept of creating a website, or they’re just lost in a haze of misguided attempts to emulate foreign architects such as the Japanese duo SANAA or the Swiss Herzog & de Meuron (both of whom belong to top echelons of the architectural elite).
The situation nevertheless isn’t tragic, thanks to numerous young practices (koFAKTOR, Arhitektri, RomanVlahovic, NFO) who aim to give their visual maximum, fully aware that a quality-based presentation is a success unto itself.
