UNStudio Built Environment
A global architecture portfolio, searchable at a thousand projects
Creative partners
- Siegel+Gale
- Bloemendaal & Dekkers
Categories
Visit
unstudio.comUNStudio is an international architecture network of more than 300 people, founded by Ben van Berkel, with projects stretching from Rotterdam to Hong Kong.
A strengthened brand identity from Siegel+Gale gave the firm a sharper expression of who they are. The website carrying it had to do more: hold a project archive already heading past 400 entries, across a network reaching from Amsterdam to Shanghai, and reach an audience in China whose main video platform was blocked outright. We were commissioned to design the new web experience, rebuild it on an editor-friendly content management system (CMS), and architect the search behind a globally distributed portfolio.
Elegance at scale
A motion-led interface gave the new identity room to breathe while keeping a thousand-project archive navigable.
We began with a brief that asked for something innovative but elegant. The tension sat in the data: behind the refined surface was a fast-growing, globally distributed project archive that needed industrial-scale filtering just to stay usable at all.
Working alongside their design agency Bloemendaal & Dekkers, we built a user interface starter kit and core page designs engineered to carry the identity work by Siegel+Gale at scale, then layered in motion prototypes refined against client feedback. The result reads as restraint rather than spectacle — considered transitions that signal architectural craft at every touchpoint, letting the work stay the focus while the brand frames it.
Search without limits
Choosing Algolia over a lighter engine simplified the codebase and kept filtering fast across a dataset built to grow past 400 projects.
With roughly 400 projects planned and more growth beyond that, the real question was whether to patch a lighter tool, MeiliSearch was on the table, or move to Algolia, heavier but built for the volume. Rather than extend an engine until it strained, we chose Algolia specifically because it simplified the codebase while handling search and filtering across both People and Projects pages at scale.
The project map could now reliably load all 1,000 projects, featured and archived alike, with address resolution now correctly plotting markets like Hong Kong that had resolved incorrectly before.
Reaching a blocked market
Video that failed silently in mainland China turned out to be a platform restriction, not a site fault, and we routed around it.
The deeper problem was a video hosting platform blocked across mainland China, so video simply never loaded for a key regional audience. After testing options, we moved playback to a provider that served reliably inside the country, protecting the firm’s access to a market central to its growth.
Impact
UNStudio now surfaces its entire global portfolio, Hong Kong included, under the identity it was built to express.
UNStudio’s new website launched to strong reception within its field, singled out as one of the standout designs and builds in its category.
The move to Algolia improved performance across a dataset built to grow past 400 projects, with filtering that now applies to featured and archived work and a People page that sorts and multi-selects across the full network. That same infrastructure let the project map load all 1,000 projects and plot every market correctly, Hong Kong among them, where regional complexity had previously broken the view.
The firm now runs a single search architecture capable of surfacing a 1,000-project global portfolio as that portfolio keeps expanding, the industrial-scale engine that lets an innovative but elegant brand expression stay effortless no matter how much work sits behind it.
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