Atlas
Client
Atlas Archive
Year
2025
Category
Web
A searchable online home for 12,000 architectural photographs.
01
Challenge
Atlas Archive held 12,000 photographs and had a site that showed them as a slow, endless grid. Researchers needed to find a building quickly, while casual visitors wanted something to browse. The previous site served neither group, and every update depended on one outside developer who was rarely available.
02
Approach
We treated the archive as an index first. Every photograph gained a place, a year, and an architect, and the home page became a typographic list that loads instantly. Images appear only once a visitor chooses a record. We built a small component set so that the archive team can publish new records without help.
12k
Photographs
0
Developer requests to publish
03
Outcome
Staff now publish records themselves. Search is the main route into the archive, and the site loads quickly because images are requested only when needed.
The new site took a week to learn and has needed no developer since launch.
Ines Carvalho
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