About Buildings DB by WikiArchitecture

Buildings DB is a structured, factual, uniform, and ever-growing database of US buildings. A powerful tool for academic research, industry professionals, and architecture enthusiasts.

Whether you're delving into architectural research or embarking on a journey through urban skylines, we provide a gateway to discover the essence of American architecture.

Who is behind this project?

Buildings DB has been created and is managed by the same team behind WikiArchitecture, the largest online architecture encyclopedia, which has been providing detailed analysis of architecturally relevant structures, for free, since 2007.

Our team is mostly by architecture academics and historians.

About our content

While WikiArchitecture approaches architectural analysis from a storytelling angle, diving into the abstract concepts of architectural design, such as concept, emotion, and intentionality, Buildings DB aims to be a data-driven database.

By utilizing factual, structured and uniform data to create our content we will be able to provide much more powerful search capabilities, filtering through decades of architectural data to find the precise information you are looking for.

Why launch a separate site?

For a while, the debate was open on whether this new approach to architectural analysis should be integrated into WikiArchitecture directly.

However, the technical challenge of converting all the articles already published on WikiArchitecture into structured data, plus the fact that WikiArchitecture covers a vast variety of building typologies all over the world, made us lean towards launching a separate site instead.

Why focus on the US?

The power of data increases as you manage to grow a representative sample. This means that having data on 100 skyscrapers is more valuable than having data on 50 skyscrapers, 30 houses and 20 airports. In the same way, having data on skyscrapers in the US makes it easier to draw conclusions than having data on 20 skyscrapers in the US, 50 in Europe and 30 in Asia.

The US offers a large, yet contained range of architectural typologies and styles, particularly those leading towards modern and contemporary architecture, which we believe will be a great starting point for this ambitious project.

We do not rule out covering other countries in the future, that is if we first manage to cover the US geography properly!

Collaborations

We aim to collaborate with esteemed institutions to enrich our database, ensuring that every entry is an artifact of accuracy and authority. While we grow our in-house content to showcase our commitment to quality, we open the doors to future partnerships that share our vision of a comprehensive architectural repository.

Educational and research use

Buildings DB is envisioned for any architecture enthusiast to enjoy. However, more powerful filtering and search capabilities are thought of as tools for educators, researchers, and industry professionals. These tools will provide insights into architectural trends and developments. From historical context to construction timelines, our database is designed to support academic pursuits and data-driven research.

If you are a researcher or industry professional and would like to learn how to extract more value from these tools, please don’t hesitate to contact us :)