How to Build an Architect Website Without Writing Code
Describe the practice and its projects in plain language, let an AI builder generate the site, then edit until the restraint is right. On Zugo a single-page practice site is a build of about a minute and a multi-page version with individual project pages takes a few minutes and starts at 12 credits.
An architecture website is a portfolio with an unusual constraint: the audience includes private clients, developers, and planning officers, and all three want different evidence. Getting the structure right matters more here than getting the styling right, which is the opposite of what most practices spend their time on.
What does an architecture practice's website need to show?
Four things, and a visitor should find all of them without using navigation.
- Project typology. Residential extension, new-build house, retrofit, commercial fit-out, listed building. A prospective client is checking whether you have done their type of building, not admiring your range.
- Registration and practice details. Your professional registration, the practice's legal name, and how long you have been operating. This is the credibility check developers make first.
- Scale and scope. The size of projects you take. A practice that does 40 square metre extensions and one that does 4000 square metre schemes look identical on a homepage unless you say so.
- How you work. Stages, what the client provides, when fees are due. This is the section that reduces speculative "how much would a house cost" enquiries.
What can wait: an awards wall, a news feed, a philosophy page. Two well-documented projects will win more work than twelve thin galleries with a manifesto attached.
How should projects be organised?
By typology first, chronology never. A visitor filtering for "extension" wants the extensions, and a reverse-chronological grid makes them hunt.
| Element of a project page | What it does | Frequent mistake |
|---|---|---|
| Cover photograph | Earns the click from the index | Using a drawing as the cover |
| Two-line brief | Says what the client wanted | Describing the site instead of the ask |
| Constraint and response | Shows judgment, not just taste | Omitting it, leaving only pictures |
| Photograph sequence | Carries the actual argument | Twenty images where six would do |
| One plan or section | Proves you are an architect | Publishing a full drawing set |
| Facts block | Location, typology, year, status | Leaving status off planning-stage work |
That last row matters. Marking a project as "planning granted" or "on site" rather than implying completion is both honest and useful, because a client with a similar consent problem is specifically looking for it.
Six photographs of one project in sequence beat sixty across sixty projects. The sequence should read like a walk through the building, not like a contact sheet.
What should the prompt say?
Name the practice, the typology, the page structure, and the visual restraint you want. An unguided generator produces a busy site, and architecture sites fail by being busy.
Build a website for a three-person architecture practice in Bristol
working on residential extensions, retrofits, and small new-build houses.
Pages:
1. Home: full-width project image, practice name, one-line description,
a six-project grid filterable by typology.
2. Project page template: cover image, two-line brief, the constraint
and how it was resolved, six photographs, one plan, and a facts
block with location, typology, year, and status.
3. Practice: three team members, registration details, how we work in
five stages.
4. Contact: form with project type, location, rough budget, and stage.
Style: white background, one typeface, generous margins, small text,
images larger than the type, no animation.
"Small text, images larger than the type" is doing the real work. The default output of most generators is a marketing site with big headings and image thumbnails, which is precisely wrong for this profession. Saying so once prevents four rounds of edits.
If you would rather adjust than describe, Zugo ships 25 templates, and the template guide covers what is in the catalogue. Forking a restrained portfolio layout means your first move is replacing content.
How do you handle drawings and large photographs?
Photographs and drawings are different problems and most practices treat them the same.
Photographs need resizing before upload. A page carrying eight untouched camera exports is slow on a phone, and a slow site loses the visitor before the building appears. Resize the long edge to a sensible width and the loss is invisible while the page becomes usable. You can use your own images throughout, which is the entire point of a practice portfolio.
Drawings need a different treatment. A plan exported at web resolution turns into grey mush, because line weights that read on A1 disappear at 900 pixels. Export drawings separately with heavier line weights, crop to the part that carries the idea, and publish one clear plan rather than a set. If someone needs the full drawings, they will email you, and that email is a lead.
One practical rule: never publish anything with a client's address, a security detail, or an unbuilt neighbour's window visible unless you have permission. That is your obligation and no builder checks it.
What does it cost and how long does it take?
Pricing is per action. A single-page site is 6 credits. A multi-page platform is 12 credits for the first three pages plus 3 for each page beyond that, and any edit is 3 credits.
A practice site with a home page, a practice page, a contact page, and four project pages is 12 plus four extra pages, so 24 credits before edits. Free comes with 5 credits, Pro is $25 a month for 200 credits, and Business is $99 a month.
Time follows the usual shape: about a minute of generation for a single page, a few minutes for the platform, and an evening of edits. If you expect to publish a new project every few months, storing projects in a Supabase table is worth the setup, because then a new project is a database row rather than another page build.
Every build is booted in a sandbox before it reaches you, and one that fails to open is reported as a failure rather than delivered as a blank screen. That lowers the risk of a dead publish without removing your own review.
What should you check before you publish?
On a phone, with the images loaded over mobile data rather than office wifi. That is the honest test for an image-heavy site.
Check that every project page states its status. Verify your registration details and practice name against your professional body's record. Submit your own contact form and confirm the email arrives, because a form that renders and submits into nothing is the quietest way to lose an enquiry. Look at one project page and ask whether a stranger could tell what problem you solved.
Then read the practice page out loud. If a sentence could appear on any architecture website in the country, cut it. Restraint in the writing matters as much as restraint in the layout, and it is cheaper to fix.
One last check that costs a minute and prevents an awkward conversation: confirm you have the right to publish each photograph. Architectural photographers usually licence images for specific uses, and a portfolio page is a use. Credit the photographer on every project page while you are there.
Where does an AI builder stop for an architecture practice?
Four limits, named honestly.
It is not a drawing viewer. In-browser CAD, BIM models, and pan-and-zoom drawing sets are specialist software. A generated site can host images and link to a file, and it should not try to be a viewer.
Unusual interaction takes iteration. A before-and-after slider, a scroll-driven section reveal, or a custom typology filter with several dimensions is reachable through multiple edits rather than one description.
Photography still decides the outcome. No builder improves a badly photographed building, and the photographer is the higher-value line in your budget.
Complex products need a team. Zugo does not replace a development team once a project becomes a real application. When it does, GitHub export gives you an ordinary repository and the project belongs to you.
For a practice that needs a credible, restrained portfolio online this week, none of that is a blocker. If your work sits closer to interiors than to buildings, the same method applies with a different structure: see building an interior design site. Otherwise, pick your two strongest projects, write their briefs in two sentences each, and describe the site around them at zugo.dev.