RIBA

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.

Gold Award of Excellence – Communicator Awards

Read The Article

Click anywhere to pause video

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

Back

2,000+ content pages reviewed, updated and migrated to RIBA.org
9,000+ migrated to RIBAJ.com via automated content migration
Single login implemented across RIBA and RIBAJ
WCAG AA accessibility compliance achieved
Unified analytics introduced
The new RIBA.org platform quickly established strong engagement, recording over 622,000 page views and 231,000 users in its first full month – an 8% increase on the previous month. Annual traffic exceeded 10 million page views, validating the platform’s role as a critical digital gateway for RIBA’s global audience.

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.

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.

Click anywhere to pause video

"This project plays a critical role in the digital strand of RIBA’s House of Architecture programme, a long-term vision to create a more connected and accessible digital home for the global architecture community. Phase one was about establishing the foundations needed to support integrated journeys, content and services for members over time."

– Lee Adams, CEO, Cantarus

The delivery of RIBA.org represents Phase 1 of this programme, focused on building the core digital infrastructure on which further optimisation and innovation can be delivered.

Our Solution

Discovery 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

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.

"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

Content Model & Editorial Enablement

A modern, flexible content model was implemented to support the breadth and volume of RIBA’s publishing needs. Component-based layouts enable editorial teams to create varied, engaging pages while maintaining consistency and accessibility.

Platform & Delivery

Cantarus delivered a modern CMS and supporting technology stack designed to reduce operational risk and support long-term scalability.

The platform is delivered on Umbraco Cloud, and as part of the delivery, the programme included a mid-stream migration from RIBA’s previous hosting environment to Umbraco Cloud, ensuring continuity while establishing a more robust and maintainable foundation.

"RIBA were clear about their objectives from the outset and remained closely engaged throughout delivery. Managing the migration alongside ongoing development required careful coordination, but it allowed the programme to move forward while establishing a more sustainable technical foundation."

– Martin Woodhall, Senior Technical Delivery Manager, Cantarus

The Partnership

From the outset, RIBA sought a long-term digital partner rather than a transactional supplier. Collaboration between RIBA, Cantarus and Johnson Banks was strong throughout, with shared objectives and close coordination across strategy, design and delivery.

"The programme benefited from close collaboration across RIBA's digital, Content and Technology teams, with Cantarus providing strong coordination, governance and delivery focus throughout."

– Aaron Woods, Interim Technology Director, RIBA

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.