Local knowledge

Architectural Review, The, Jan, 2005 by Sutherland Lyall

You would be astonished if the web site of multi-Stirling Prize winner practice, Wilkinson Eyre, wasn't up to snuff. So no surprises then that its new version, designed by ID Media London, is pretty good indeed. My caveat is that the only way I could have known that ID Media had designed the site was to look all over the place.

Eventually there it was discreetly at the bottom of the home page. Against current best practice guidelines, the text can't be altered in size but since it is not set as the three point Helvetica Roman so greatly favoured by architects who design their own sites there is less cause for complaint. Bucking the convention of a navigation strip down the left-hand side, the Wilkinson Eyre site has the basic navigation in a smallish grey rectangle at the bottom right corner with an arrow and the word 'menu'. The basic sections are 'Home', 'News', 'Projects', 'About Us', 'People' (with the normally lugubrious Wilkinson essaying a quite convincing smile) and 'Contact'. It's all nice and simple and there is not much in the way of laborious content. Naturally 'Projects' is the section you turn to and here things are arranged by building types. You can sort of search on date--but that is by date within each building category so it's not so useful. A nice touch is the little thumbnails which instantly pop up in the navigation box as you run down the categories. It is so fast that it represents an alternative search method--but it should be copied only by web designers who understand speed.