1 Week Sites builds bespoke Next.js websites for UK ARB- and RIBA-registered architects and small practices — £1,000 flat, paid upfront, live in seven days, with a full refund within 48 hours if I miss day seven. Most practices I meet are on a WordPress portfolio theme or Squarespace, both of which compress images aggressively and make a £2 million residential project look like a £200k extension. A bespoke build gives you a considered, image-first site with proper responsive imagery, lazy-loading, and per-project pages that hold their own on a 4K display. Over five years the total sits around £1,300 — £1,000 build plus roughly £60 a year for domain and email. You own the code, the image assets, and the brand. Seven days from brief to live, one revision round, no retainer.
What an architect-site visitor actually wants
The visitor is usually one of three people: a private client briefing a renovation who has been referred by a neighbour, a developer or contractor sizing up the practice for a future collaboration, or a planning officer checking the firm's precedents. All three want images, first and foremost — crisp, uncompressed, properly sequenced project photography with architectural drawings or plans alongside. They want a clear view of the work type (residential, commercial, heritage, conservation), ARB or RIBA registration, a named principal, and the rough fee structure or 'RIBA Stage' model you work to. They do not want a WordPress gallery with 85% JPEG quality, a flash intro, or a 2,000-word 'our philosophy' page. The best architect sites I see are quiet galleries with confident typography and nothing between the visitor and the work.
What most architect sites get wrong
- WordPress portfolio theme that compresses 4K photography to 1200×800 at 70% quality.
- Hero image that takes six seconds to load on 4G — visitor is already on Google.
- Generic 'about our philosophy' writing that every practice seems to reuse.
- No ARB or RIBA registration number on the homepage.
- Project pages missing drawings, plans, or scale context.
- Contact form as the only CTA — developers and private clients want to call.
What a good architect brief includes
Four things locked on Monday ship the week. One, project list with full-resolution source imagery (TIFF or high-quality JPEG, 3000px+), drawings, and a short description per project including location, scope, brief, completion year, and contractor. Two, ARB and RIBA registration numbers. Three, named principal with a recent photo and short biography. Four, how enquiries should land — phone, email, or a short project-brief form. The brief template handles the rest before Tuesday.
The seven-day week
Same week, same shape, whoever you are. Brief Monday, design Tuesday, build Wednesday to Friday, revisions Saturday, launch Sunday. One site a week, one client at a time.
- Monday — sixty-minute video-call brief, scope and copy locked.
- Tuesday — design in Figma, one route shown to sign-off.
- Wednesday–Friday — build in Next.js, Tailwind, TypeScript.
- Saturday — one round of revisions, real copy and imagery.
- Sunday — launch to your Vercel, DNS on your registrar, full handover.
Architects-specific questions
Will images load fast without losing detail?
Yes — the build pipeline generates AVIF, WebP, and JPEG fallbacks at multiple sizes, lazy-loads anything below the fold, and serves from a CDN. Cores Web Vitals pass on mobile even with a gallery-heavy homepage. Original TIFFs stay as the source of truth, not the published asset.
Can I keep updating projects myself after launch?
Simple content edits yes — a plain-Markdown project page is easy to edit without code. New galleries or layouts need a developer, which can be me or anyone else. The GitHub repo is yours.
Do you handle drawings and plans alongside photography?
Yes. Per-project pages support drawings at original aspect ratios with proper captions. PDF floor plans can be inline-embedded or linked as downloads depending on what the project deserves.
Common questions
Is £1,000 really all-in, or do I pay extra later?
£1,000 is all-in for a five-to-seven-page bespoke marketing site: brief, design, build, one revision round, launch. No monthly fee, no retainer, no kill fee. You pay for your own domain (≈£12/year) and email hosting (≈£4/month). Nothing goes through me.
What happens if you miss day seven?
Full refund within 48 hours, no arguments. I take the loss — that's what keeps the deadline real. It has not happened yet and the guarantee is what stops it happening.
Who owns the finished site?
You do, fully. The code lives in a GitHub repo transferred to your account. The Vercel hosting project is on your Vercel account. The domain is on your registrar. You can hire any Next.js developer to take it forward — nothing is locked to me.
Bespoke, live in seven days.
£1,000 flat. Paid upfront. Full refund if I miss day seven. Code, hosting, and domain all in your name — whether you are a architect in Liverpool or London.