Website designers face many of the same challenges as architects of buildings. Both are contracted to design a product that is both functional and aesthetically pleasing for the clients. Both have a multitude of materials from which to construct the end product and a multitude of ways in to use the materials in the construction. The proper balance of form and function must be ever present in both the website designers mind and that of the architect. In the last year or so many website designers have gone to a more minimalist UI (user interface) and UX (user experience) . In many ways, this minimalist approach to website design has the same look, feel, and most importantly, functionality, as modernist architecture. Modernist architecture is characterized by simplification of form and the subversion of the ornate into the structure and theme of the building.

The web is replete with web designers who have “over-designed” websites. Where simple CSS would suffice the web designers have used Flash. And too numerous to count are the sites that are so mind-achingly complex that the user fails to engage the site in the way the designer (and more importantly, the owner) had anticipated. This phenomena is not unlike what can occur when architects “over-design” buildings. It is therefore instructive to investigate whether the movements in building architecture over the last 100 years can be instructive in any manner. Specifically, whether web designers might be able to learn from the modernist architecture movement of the last century. Overly ornate designs; designs without relation to the function of the building and its intended use by its occupants; and designs that evince no understanding of the landscape in which the building was constructed are all “problems” that modernist architects sought to rectify. One such architect in particular was Richard Neutra.

Neutra was a Viennese born architect who attained prominence in America as one of the great modernist architects. He designed many homes in the Southern California area. Homes designed by Richard Neutra combined Bauhaus modernism with Southern California building traditions. Neutra’s houses were dramatic, flat-surfaced buildings placed into a carefully arranged landscape.

“Neutra believed that the architect should strive for a response to space and time that may be only fleeting, yet in its intensity becomes truly memorable.”

Neutra studied how occupants used a building and how those occupants flowed from room to room. He based his designs on the needs of the owners and occupants.
Neutra used courtyards, sliding glass doors and walls and mirrors to reflect exterior views; all of which encouraged a relationship between occupants and nature. His designs were complementary to its surroundings. The buildings did not overpower the landscape. Stated simply, nothing was over-designed in a Richard Neutra home. Coves were simple, doors were left untrimmed and landscaping was important but minimal. In a Neutra designed building there was an emphasis on purpose and quality over quantity.

It takes no great leap of imagination to see how similar ideas can be used in website design. To enter a Neutra designed home is to understand immediately the purpose of the home AND the character of its owners. A website should strive for a similar effect. Websites must not be a confusing mess that is nothing more than the result of an ego-driven designer. Less is more.

A designer must strive for the user to use the website effortlessly. The user must use the site in a manner that is both conscious and unconscious. At the point where the user is conscious of having to navigate a site the purpose of the site is perforce vitiated. In the same way that Buddhist meditation requires one to not think about not thinking, the end-user should not think about navigating around the site. The site should offer a feng-shui environment that is purposeful but not apparent. Navigating the site should be organic, and the process should exhibit the same free flow of time and space that a Neutra home exhibited. A website should be designed to satisfy the regular user as well as the one-time user—and this satisfaction should occur in the same way and to the same degree.
Neutra remarked that

A building can be designed to satisfy “by the month” with the regularity of a provider. Or it can give satisfaction in a very different way, “by the moment,” the fraction of a second, with the thrill of a lover.

Web designers would do well to study more closely how exactly he did so.

W.C. Garth Snider