Smiley faces.

The outlines of Oliver Richards and his partners are all faceless. Happily Recently looming out of the screen have been too many mugshots of balding architects trying to look serious and youthfully shaven-headed and succeeding only in appearing thuggish and untrustworthy. So it was a relief to see the smiley faces on the Architects Design Partnership site at www.adparchitects.co.uk. This is another virtuously simple site. But the home page is really irritating. It has six thumbnails in a row which start to change as soon as you get there. Achieving this, even without using Flash, is not exactly rocket science so you wonder why. Aha, the opening page for each section of Projects has the same layout. These thumbnails don't, however, move--for which you are quite grateful. But the individual buildings are clearly presented and, frabjous day, the size of the text can be altered. Oh, and what of the philosophy bit, here called Our Vision? Matisse, and that dry old stick, Alberti with his Santa Maria Novella plus Bryan Avery (I thought he ran a rival practice) are all mentioned along with a short piece discussing the company logo: 'Our logo is a scientifically accurate representation of what we see combining logic and accuracy with a timeless perspective of art and creation'. Translations on a postcard please. No, joking, don't bother. Such nonsense from those nice, talented and smiling people.