After exhaustive research (a.k.a. my internet explorer history) and peer feedback (I asked the people in my office) I have created the definitive listing of the Best Architectural Websites in the World for 2014. In all seriousness, I have spent weeks putting this list together, read far more cruddy websites than I care to think about, and fallen behind on The Americans in my effort to bring you a quality list of architectural websites that should be in your online rotation. I only had three pieces of criteria when cultivating this list:
a) You had to publish regularly
It’s surprising to see how often the good websites can’t maintain momentum after a relatively short period of time. I suppose it shouldn’t be all that surprising to me, I’ve been doing this for 4 years and stopped being good at it 2 years ago
b) You had to have some sort of editorial or 1st person narratives
I prefer to read websites that are written by a person – even better if it’s someone I can relate to on some level. I don’t particularly care about faceless organizations unless they produce really good content. I have removed most aggregate sites from my list for this reason.
c) You can’t suck
I give a lot of credit for effort – both in real life and in my architectural websites. If you have a site and can’t be bothered with generating your own content, or adding your voice to the conversation – I’m probably not coming back. Simply sharing a link to someone else’s site isn’t good enough to make this list.
Since I don’t have a blog roll on my site, I am going to put together a yearly list of my favorite websites. Here is my previous list for the Best Architectural Websites but that list is now outdated.
So let’s get to it – in no particular order, Life of an Architect’s Favorite Websites for 2014:
- Architonic- The Independant Resource for Architecture and Design
Architonic is an aggregate site that seems to have pulled in feeds from all over the world. If there is something cool going on – a symposium, a lecture, an interview with someone fascinating, etc. it’s bound to show up here. They have architectural eye-candy as well but their real strong suit is the news and trends that they dig up from just about everywhere.
