How to Build an Architecture Portfolio Website
An architecture portfolio needs project pages that hold plans, sections, and photos together as one story, galleries built to handle large technical drawings without cropping them badly, real image file limits you won't hit mid-upload, and somewhere to credit the engineers, photographers, and firms who worked on a project with you. A PDF still matters for job applications even once a website exists - the two aren't a choice between one or the other. Here's what Squarespace and Cargo, a platform built specifically for design and architecture portfolios, each document for these jobs, checked September 2026.
What does an architecture portfolio actually need?
- Project pages - each building or project as its own page, not a single scrolling wall of everything.
- Large drawings and photos in the same gallery - a section drawing and a site photo have very different aspect ratios and resolutions.
- Real image quality - plans and elevations need to stay legible when zoomed, not just look fine as a thumbnail.
- A PDF portfolio - many firms and schools still ask for one for a job or school application, separate from the public site.
- Credits for collaborators - a structural engineer, a photographer, or a partner firm on a project deserve a documented line, not just your own name.
How do project pages work?
Squarespace's Portfolio pages are built around exactly this structure: "Use portfolio pages to create stylized landing pages that link visitors to sub-pages called projects" (Squarespace, "Portfolio pages", checked September 2026). Each project functions as a real sub-page, not just a gallery entry - Squarespace describes projects as "collection items, dependent on the main portfolio collection page, similar to blog posts in a blog page," so each project gets its own URL and content area while staying organized under one landing page.
Cargo's equivalent is a "Set," which organizes standalone pages rather than generating dependent sub-pages: "Sets are used to organize pages" into visual groups or structural site sections, and a thumbnail index "can be configured to show thumbnails of pages of a specific Set" (Cargo, "Pages and Sets", checked September 2026) - useful for a portfolio landing page that shows a thumbnail grid of full, independent project pages rather than items nested inside one collection.
The practical difference: Squarespace's projects live and die with their parent portfolio page, while Cargo's Sets group pages that could, in principle, stand alone elsewhere on the site too.
What image quality and file limits should I actually plan around?
This is where the two platforms genuinely diverge, and it matters for architecture specifically because drawings and renders run larger than typical web photography.
Squarespace caps uploads at "20 MB or less," with a resolution ceiling of "120 MP (megapixel)" and a recommended width of "2500 pixels... for most images" (Squarespace, "Formatting images for display on the web", checked September 2026). File type is a real constraint worth knowing before you export a drawing: "Only .jpg, .gif, .png, or .webp" are accepted as images, and the same page states plainly that ".pdf, .psd, and .doc files aren't compatible" as image uploads. A TIFF export straight from CAD software or a layered Photoshop composite needs converting to one of those four formats first.
Cargo's limit is looser and its format list wider: "File size limit is 25MB per image," and accepted formats include "PNG, JPG, GIF, SVG, WEBP, AVIF, HEIC, HEIFF, TIFF" (Cargo, "Images", checked September 2026) - TIFF support in particular matters for architecture, since it's a common export format for high-resolution renders and scanned drawings that a photography-first platform may not accept directly.
How do galleries handle a mix of drawings and photos?
Squarespace's Gallery block is built for a single consistent layout: "add galleries of images and videos to pages and blog posts in a variety of layouts" (Squarespace, "Gallery blocks", checked September 2026), with per-image titles that "act as alt text" for SEO and accessibility. It doesn't document a layout mode built specifically for mixing very different aspect ratios - a wide site plan and a tall interior photo - within one gallery cleanly.
Cargo documents five distinct gallery modes for exactly this kind of mixed content: Grid and Columnized both "display images in discrete rows and columns" where "each row takes on the height of the tallest item"; Justify "lays out images in rows of uniform height as if the images were words in a text document"; Freeform lets you drag "images... anywhere within the gallery area" with magnetic snap alignment; and Slideshow "displays images in a timed cycle" (Cargo, "Galleries", checked September 2026). Freeform in particular is the mode built for a page that needs to place a wide floor plan next to a tall photograph without forcing both into the same row height.
Do I still need a PDF, even with a website?
Yes, in practice - a website and a PDF portfolio serve different requests. A job or school application often specifically asks for a PDF: a fixed, print-ready layout that won't reflow differently on the reviewer's screen the way a responsive web page will. A website is the better format for the same portfolio to be linked, searched, and browsed casually.
Neither platform here builds a live PDF viewer into a project page by default. Squarespace supports linking to an uploaded PDF for visitors to open or download - "file uploads must be 20 MB or smaller," and clicking the link opens the file in the browser or downloads it depending on the file type (Squarespace, "Uploading and managing files", checked September 2026). To actually embed a PDF inline on the page rather than just link to it, Squarespace's own documentation points to a third-party tool: "Use Issuu to embed .pdfs in your Squarespace site" (Squarespace, "Displaying files on your site", checked September 2026). Cargo documents a file library with a "size limit is 250MB per file" (Cargo, "Files", checked September 2026) for hosting a downloadable PDF, well above Squarespace's 20 MB link limit - useful for a full, high-resolution portfolio PDF rather than a compressed one.
How do I credit collaborators?
Neither platform documents a dedicated "credit" field - both point you toward their general caption tools instead. On Squarespace, the gallery block's per-image field is a title and description, which Squarespace states "acts as alt text" (Squarespace, "Gallery blocks") - functional for a credit line, but built for accessibility and SEO, not attribution. On Cargo, images and videos support a "Caption" field, added from the image's settings menu (Cargo, "Images", checked September 2026) - the more natural home for a line like "Structural engineer: [firm]. Photography: [name]," even though it isn't a purpose-built credits feature either.
What does each route look like side by side?
| Job | Squarespace | Cargo |
|---|---|---|
| Project pages | Portfolio pages, projects as dependent sub-pages | Sets, thumbnail index of standalone pages |
| Image file limit | 20 MB, 120 MP resolution cap | 25 MB per image |
| Accepted image formats | .jpg, .gif, .png, .webp only | PNG, JPG, GIF, SVG, WEBP, AVIF, HEIC, HEIFF, TIFF |
| Gallery layouts for mixed content | One general-purpose gallery block | 5 modes, including Freeform for mixed aspect ratios |
| PDF file hosting | 20 MB via link editor; inline embed needs Issuu | 250 MB file library |
| Collaborator credits | Image title/description (alt-text field) | Image caption field |
Which platform fits which portfolio?
- Pick Cargo if your work includes CAD exports, high-resolution renders, or scanned drawings in TIFF or HEIC, or if you need a gallery layout built for mixing a wide floor plan with a tall photo on the same page.
- Pick Squarespace if you want a more guided, template-driven setup and your images are already standard web formats under its size limits, or you want the same account handling a portfolio alongside other business pages.
- Either, if collaborator credits matter to you specifically - neither has a dedicated field, so plan on using the caption or alt-text field either way.
If your portfolio is design-led and you'd rather start from a Figma file than a page editor, our roundup of Figma photography portfolio templates covers free starting files (several suit a minimal, image-forward layout that also works for architecture), and our photography portfolio website guide covers the client-proofing and print-sales tools relevant if you also shoot and sell your own project photography.
Where does Figment fit in?
If the portfolio is fully designed in Figma first, Figment publishes those frames as a live website through its Figma plugin - full control over how a drawing and a photo sit next to each other, since the layout is built in Figma rather than fit into a gallery block's preset modes. It has no dedicated portfolio-projects structure, image-size documentation, or PDF-hosting feature of its own, so a multi-project portfolio built this way means designing each project page by hand in Figma rather than relying on a Sets- or Portfolio-pages-style system to generate them.
Bottom line: the real differences here are image format support and gallery flexibility for mixed content, not the ability to make a page look good. Check each platform's current file-size and format limits directly before you upload a large drawing export, since a rejected upload is a worse discovery mid-portfolio-build than a converted file beforehand.
