Counterspace (Ryan Honeyball)
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Q: Why do you have a Brutalist Website?
A: Counterspace: We're dedicated to engaging with and uncovering realities of the cities and spaces we work in, and drawing on these narratives to create and enhance space. Often, in architectural practice in Johannesburg, everyday rituals and ways of making space are ignored or overlooked. We're is inspired by the city's interesting and difficult conditions, and see our work as born out of the challenging contexts. The studio believes that there are new ways of making embedded in and intrinsic to these conditions, which need to be developed, and chooses to situate our work in this margin, as opposed to having a larger contingent of more commercial work or conventional practice.

Henn+Honeyball: As a studio Counterspace is very aware of the context that surrounds them. Informal systems thrive in Johannesburg, from garbage removal and recycling to housing. People find ways of building what they need from what they have. So the decision to build the website in this way was a reflection on context and to highlight Counterspace's experimentation, but also to avoid the usual slick, glossy websites that dominate the corporate world, the kind of websites that are gentrifying the web.

Everything is accessible in one place, sort of like the home page is a plan that lays out the rest of the site. This came from discussions with Counterspace about the similarities between planning a building and planning a website, how you have to anticipate movement from one space or page to the next. We then showed them wireframes and again discussed how they are the blueprints of the site. They loved the look of the wireframes and weren't sure there should be much more to the design except to add a bit of fun, something they see as integral to their practice. That's where the moving gradient background came in. We'd like to think it represents the inevitable changes that take place in any environment, but mostly it's just for fun.
Q: Who designed the website?
A: Henn+Honeyball
Q: Who coded the website?
A: Pete Reynolds
Q: With what kind of editor?
A: Sublime Text
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http://counterspace-studio.com