A project archive and design system for a 90-person architecture practice with thirty years of drawings.
[02]
Tessel’s best work was spread across three servers, a basement of flat files and the memories of four partners. Assembling a bid deck took a week of searching.
Their public website showed twelve projects, all over ten years old.
[03]
We catalogued 2,300 projects with a small, strict set of fields (year, type, size, status) and built an internal archive where any drawing is two filters away.
The same components power the public site, so publishing a project is a checkbox, not a design job.
[05]
Bid decks now take about a day instead of a week. The public site shows 80 current projects and brought in two competition invitations in its first year.
The design system has 46 components and a written rulebook the office actually uses.
[06]
A design system is a list of decisions. The components were the easy part; agreeing what ‘status’ means took three workshops.
[07]
MORE WORK
Payroll for freelancers, rebuilt so a monthly pay run takes four minutes instead of an afternoon.
Online booking for a chain of 23 physio clinics, designed with the receptionists who used to take every call.
A furniture store that sold mostly in person. The new shop explains fabrics, sizes and lead times before anyone has to ask.
