A concept brief for a small architecture practice publishing its own project archive. Built end-to-end to show the work — live client work shown on request.
Atlas & Pine is a concept brief for an eight-person Stafford architecture practice. The category problem: most small practices list projects as a single PDF download per page, which leaves them invisible to anyone not already searching by name. The brief: give every project a proper home, and make publishing new ones a fifteen-minute job for the practice lead.
Give every project a proper home. Make publishing the next one a fifteen-minute job.
The four specific calls that defined this build.
Most CMSs for studios are overengineered: 30+ fields per project that nobody fills in. Atlas & Pine's schema is two fields and a body block. Forces simplicity, halves the publishing time, and means projects ship even on a busy week.
Architecture sites love hero carousels. Visitors don't — they almost never auto-advance, and the ones that do are studied as bad UX. Every project is one stacked column of full-bleed images with a generous fold between each.
Most practice sites have a 'press' page that's a wall of logos and press cuttings. Cut to a four-line block on the homepage. Compact, scannable, doesn't shout.
Architectural projects span years. Stating '2024–2026' on each project is more honest about real timelines, and quietly tells the prospect the practice isn't churning through cheap conversions.
Every tool chosen on purpose, with a reason that beat the obvious alternative.
Static export per project means the site stays fast as the archive grows. ISR on the index page handles new project drops.
The practice already had editors comfortable with Sanity from a previous job. Two-field schema means there's nothing to learn.
Sanity for transforms, Vercel for format negotiation. AVIF on Chrome, WebP everywhere else, no manual processing.
Git-driven deploys. The practice doesn't need a deployment process — `git push` is the process.
Cookie-free, the dashboard fits on one screen. The practice lead actually looks at it.
Hero images stream first, body images lazy-load. Project pages stay under 200kb critical path even with six photographs.
The numbers a real engagement would be scored on.
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