How We Built a Photography-First Website for a St. John Architecture Firm
Barefoot Design Group, LLC is a full-service architectural firm that has been building in the U.S. Virgin Islands for more than 30 years. Led by Michael Milne, AIA, the office sits at Mongoose Junction in Cruz Bay, St. John, and designs private residences, resorts, and multi-unit housing for an island environment.
An architecture firm is hired on the strength of its work, not on its copy. Barefoot needed a site where the buildings carry the argument, where nothing on screen competes with them, and where a prospective client can read the range of the practice before ever picking up the phone.
Built So the Architecture Is the Interface
- Full-bleed project photography on the homepage, with navigation stripped back to About, Work, and Contact
- A logo lockup and menu that sit over the image instead of inside a heavy header bar
- Quiet, neutral typography so no type treatment competes with the buildings
- Generous white space between projects, laid out the way a printed portfolio is
Three menu items is a deliberate decision. A visitor evaluating an architect wants to see the work and then reach a person, and every extra link is a chance to lose them somewhere else.
A Work Section Organized the Way Clients Actually Browse
- Twelve projects filterable by All, In Progress, Private, and Public
- Program and location stated for each build, for example ten one and two bedroom apartments at Contant, St John
- Individual project pages for the larger commissions, including Casa Bella Luna, Coral Cove, Villa Xubi, and Kona Makai
- Resort and hospitality work presented alongside private residences, so the reach of the practice is obvious at a glance
The Public and Private filters do real work here. A developer weighing a 45-room resort and a family planning a six-bedroom house both get to a relevant example in one click.
Positioned on 30 Years of Building in the Islands
- An About page that leads with the firm’s goals, then its services, then its people
- Services named plainly: master planning, conceptual design, construction documents, project management, and construction administration
- Michael Milne’s history on St John since 1996 presented as the credential it is
- Copy that names the actual constraint, designing and building on an island, rather than generic design language
Anyone can claim experience. Naming the place, the years, and the disciplines is what makes it checkable.
Built to Last and to Stay Easy to Update
- A WordPress build the firm owns outright, with no proprietary platform to keep renting
- A project structure that takes on new work without needing a redesign
- A mobile layout that keeps the photography full-bleed instead of cropping it into thumbnails
- Office address, phone, and email reachable from every page
A practice that adds a handful of commissions a year needs to add them itself, in minutes, without calling anyone.
Run an architecture practice that gets hired on its portfolio?
Barefoot Design Group is live at barefootarchitects.com. If you run an architecture firm and need a site that puts the work first and still brings in qualified inquiries, see our custom website design for architects.
