Beauty in the eye of the beholder.

Arguably the function of an architectural website is, in the space of maybe ten seconds, to fill potential client-viewers with confidence in the practice's ability and experience and in the likelihood that it is staffed by people with whom the client can work happily during the next couple of years. One such site is that of Adrian James who runs a small practice in Oxfordshire, whose single page site at www.adrianjames.com is a model. It has rapidly-loaded photos down the left, sketches in a narrow column down the middle and the brief text down the right. The latter begins with the immortal lines, 'We deliver beautiful buildings which clients love'. And ends with, 'We can transform apparently mundane projects into wonderful buildings'. Who, these days, dares talk about their buildings as wonderful and beautiful? Mind you I have recently come across 'playful' and discovered a demented caterpillar upon which you have to pounce to navigate the site. The latter frivolity is, surprisingly, at one of the big 10 British practices, Reid Architecture at www.reidarchitecture.com. The former, which, mysteriously, also offers 'sensuality', is at www.d2-design.co.uk. You have to be pretty confident about yourself and the way you operate to buck the conservative trend--plus, of course, the services of a web-deviser. Don't kid yourselves with that uomo universale stuff. Websites are not building sites. Get a pro.