Case study
Establishing the digital foundation for the House of Architecture
The Royal Institute of British Architects partnered with Cantarus to deliver the first phase of the digital strand of its transformative House of Architecture programme. The launch of RIBA.org and RIBAJ.com created a unified digital foundation, improved accessibility and usability, and established the platform for future personalisation, commerce and digital services across RIBA’s expanding online estate.
The Challenge
RIBA’s digital content, products and services are among its most valuable assets. Over time, however, its digital estate had grown organically across multiple websites, platforms and teams. This resulted in fragmented user journeys, inconsistent branding, duplicated processes and increased operational complexity.
Members, students and the public found it increasingly difficult to navigate between sites, locate relevant content, or understand the full breadth of RIBA’s digital offering. Separate systems required multiple logins, information architecture varied by platform, and engagement suffered as users abandoned journeys before finding what they needed.
As a primary digital touchpoint for members and the wider architecture community, RIBA’s website plays a critical role in how audiences access content, services and support. RIBA needed a modern, integrated digital foundation that could improve usability and accessibility, simplify internal processes and support long-term strategic goals.
The project formed part of RIBA’s wider House of Architecture programme – a long-term initiative to transform its members’ offering; upgrading its digital technology and creating a vastly improved online experience, bringing together its architectural collections, and sensitive, essential refurbishment and restoration of its London home at 66 Portland Place.
The new RIBA websites bring together strong information architecture, clear user journeys and a lovely alignment of the new brand to our online presence. It balances form and function well, while providing a great foundation for how our digital services will continue to evolve.
— Aaron Woods, Interim Technology Director, RIBA
The Solution
Digital strategy definition began in early 2023, followed by extensive internal consultation and the approval of a detailed business case in July 2023. This identified the need to consolidate platforms, redefine user experience and establish a scalable, future-ready digital foundation.
1. Stakeholder scale and governance
Managing a large and diverse stakeholder group required strong structure, facilitation and clear design authority.
2. Audience complexity and navigation
Extensive research and iteration were needed to simplify journeys across highly diverse audiences.
3. Harmonising Search and Taxonomy
Reducing duplicated content between RIBA.org and RIBAJ.com, enhancing SEO posture, combining search experiences between the two sites to make journeys findable for users, and merging taxonomies between the two large sites to enable search / cross-linking content between the sites.
Disovery and Design
Cantarus led a comprehensive discovery phase to refine challenges, understand audience needs and define clear delivery strategies across RIBA’s complex digital estate. This work was carried out in close collaboration with RIBA’s internal teams and alongside brand agency Johnson Banks, who developed RIBA’s refreshed visual identity.
Cantarus worked closely with Johnson Banks to translate the refreshed brand into a coherent and usable digital system across RIBA.org and RIBAJ.com. This included aligning brand principles with digital UX requirements, ensuring consistency between physical and digital expressions, and adapting the identity to support accessibility, usability and performance at scale.
A website is often the primary way members experience an organisation, so there was a real responsibility to ensure the RIBA platform respected its heritage while supporting a more modern, accessible and flexible digital experience. Working closely with Johnson Banks allowed us to translate the refreshed brand into something that functions at scale across both RIBA and RIBAJ with a global design system.
– Rob Helsby, Creative Director, Cantarus
From an information architecture and UX perspective, the new site provides much clearer structure with a lovely smooth flow across menus and pages. It gives users confidence that they can find what they need, while also supporting how the organisation wants to grow its digital services.
– Aaron Woods, Interim Technology Director, RIBA
Information Architecture & User Journeys
RIBA serves a highly diverse audience, including architects, students, educators, policymakers and the architecture-interested public. A key focus of Phase 1 was rationalising information architecture to reduce complexity and help users find relevant content more easily.
Through research, testing and iteration, Cantarus supported RIBA in redefining navigation and structure, creating clearer pathways across content, learning and services.
Content Model, Platform & Delivery
A flexible, component-based content model supports the breadth and volume of RIBA's publishing needs, enabling editorial teams to create varied pages while maintaining consistency and accessibility. The platform is delivered on Umbraco Cloud, including a mid-stream migration from RIBA's previous hosting environment, carried out alongside ongoing development to establish a more robust, maintainable foundation.
The Results
Early Outcomes & Signals
Internal feedback from RIBA and RIBAJ content teams has highlighted:
- A clearer, more intuitive CMS interface
- Drag-and-drop components and batch image uploads
- Automatic image resizing, removing a significant editorial overhead
The new design has also been positively received internally as a confident digital expression of RIBA’s refreshed brand.
Future Forward
Phase 1 establishes the foundation for continued digital transformation. Future phases will build on this foundation to support unified user journeys, personalisation and new digital applications for learning, architecture practice search and online collections.
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