More than 650,000 people a day enter the ArchDaily site, making it the most visited architecture consultation website in the world and now, according to the latest ranking of Alexa on the Internet, a company owned by Amazon, it is one of the 1,000 most visited sites on the web.
Did you know that this platform started with the idea of two recently graduated Chilean architects? Of course, they never imagined that in such a short time their venture would lead them to have offices in Chile, the United States, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia and China, and that they would be recognized worldwide. This is their story.
David Basulto and David Assael met while studying architecture and in 2008 came up with a website that would provide architects with knowledge about how architecture was being built and how it was being thought about.
"To build cities, part of our responsibility as architects is to be well informed and considering how expensive a subscription to a good magazine is, we wanted to deliver that information openly and on a large scale. In 2008, when we started this project, Chilean architecture was living a very good moment and we wanted to show it. Chile is a place from where we can see the world well, it is a real hub, that is a great advantage," says David Basulto.
At first, the priority was to publish projects by Chilean and Latin American architects, to share what they were doing and connect them globally.
"At the same time that Chilean architecture was becoming known, Chile began to arouse international curiosity as a highly recommended tourist destination and then because of the rescue of the 33 miners. The super-powerful country image helped us grow the site," Basulto explains.
"Although the site was in Spanish, the whole world saw us, from the United States, Germany, China, Japan. That's how we realized the potential of the platform; those who read us were looking for access to a fresh and open architecture. So we decided to launch the English version," says Basulto.
A year and a half after they published the first article in English, symbolically from a New York café, ArchDaily became the most visited architecture site in the world. Today, with offices in six countries around the world, the platform is active in four languages (Spanish, English, Chinese and Portuguese) and its main audiences come from the United States, followed by China.
"Our job is to curate, understand and show what is happening, which architects are innovating. This site is a showcase for them and they contribute to us to make this database grow. Now all architects know the platform," says David Basulto.
ArchDaily's creators have traveled the continents participating in architecture and construction fairs and conferences. They have also been invited to entrepreneurship and innovation meetings to tell their story, and have even shared in events with Barack Obama and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.
"Our business model is to deliver knowledge and opportunities to architects, and connect them with manufacturers, who also deliver technical information through our platform," explains ArchDaily's co-founder.
"We started with nothing, just a lot of desire. Today we are in a stage of consolidating new markets, so we are in Europe, which has an even larger market than the United States and more mature, accustomed to digital channels, where the industry is rapidly digitizing. Our competition today is there," says David Basulto from Zurich, Switzerland.
Highlighting works by Chilean architects such as the Quinta Monroy social housing (2003), by Alejandro Aravena (Pritzker Prize 2016); the GAM Cultural Center (2008), by Cristián Fernández and Lateral Arquitectura & Diseño, and the Tierra Patagonia hotel (2011), by Cazú Zegers, David Basulto maintains that "Chilean architecture is at its best moment and we are mutually reinforcing each other".
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