Marlowe Architecture: a website for a solo architect, built on a self-hosted .NET CMS

One-off build note: this site was built to a brief, not taken from a template gallery. Hand a brief like it to an AI agent with the raytha CLI, and publish what comes out: the site, the files behind it, and a kit you can use to rebuild it yourself. This one is a website for a solo architect: a portfolio of houses, an about page in first person, services, a journal, and a members-only client portal with drawings and weekly updates.

If you are looking for a website for a solo architect, a .NET CMS for architects, or a self-hosted CMS for an architecture portfolio, this is the kind of site a one-person practice builds on Raytha: strong enough to win work, simple enough for one person to run alone. The agent built it on a fresh Raytha 2.0.1 instance. Nobody opened the admin. Every template, content type, item, page, menu and group went in through the CLI, from files in a directory.

Marlowe Architecture is fictional. Elena Marlowe, her clients, houses and results are invented, and the site says so on every page. There are no payment or booking forms.

Why a solo architect looks for a self-hosted CMS

A solo architect is the designer, the office manager and the IT department. The website has to win clients who are about to spend more than they ever have, and it has to be maintainable on a Friday afternoon between site visits. The same questions come up:

• Your portfolio is your practice. Houses, ADUs and remodels need large images, plans, materials and the story of the land — not a generic grid theme you fight every time you add a project.
• You own the code and the content. Raytha is MIT-licensed. Templates, content types and content are plain files you can keep in a repository, move to another host, or hand to another developer without a license transfer.
• No per-seat or per-site licensing. There is no fee per editor, per site or per page view — which, for a one-person practice, means the CMS never becomes a second rent payment.
• Self-hosted, on-premises or managed. Raytha is a .NET 10 application with PostgreSQL, shipped as a Docker image. Run it on your own infrastructure, or have it fully hosted and managed for you under contract.
• A .NET stack a developer can support. Raytha is ASP.NET Core with Liquid templates. A .NET team can host, review and extend it, and the templates are plain HTML and CSS.
• A client portal without a second product. Public user accounts and user groups let each homeowner sign in to see only their own drawings, updates and decisions, instead of hunting through email.

Raytha fits solo architects and small practices that want to own their stack: the code is open source, the content model is yours, and you can run it on your own infrastructure. If you would rather not run it yourself, Raytha can be fully hosted and managed for you under contract. Where another platform may suit you better is if you need a large plugin marketplace, or an all-in-one marketing suite with CRM and marketing automation built in. For fair comparisons with platforms architects and .NET teams often evaluate, see Raytha vs WordPress, Raytha vs Umbraco, Raytha vs Kentico and Raytha vs Directus.

What was built

Marlowe Architecture is the website of Elena Marlowe, AIA (fictional), a solo architect in Austin, Texas, who designs modern houses, ADUs and remodels in Austin and the Hill Country. She writes in first person throughout, because on her site — as in her practice — there is no one else to hide behind. The site has:

• A home page that leads with three houses, then services, how working with a solo architect works, a homeowner testimonial and recent journal entries.
• Six projects, filterable by type (new homes, ADUs, remodels, courtyard houses), each with the land and brief, what Elena designed, materials, measurable results, a plan-and-materials board and a homeowner quote.
• An about page in first person: portrait, credentials, why she works alone, and her journal writing.
• Four services — new homes, ADUs and guest houses, remodels and additions, consultations and feasibility — each with deliverables, timelines and related houses.
• Start here: a free first conversation, a feasibility study, and a design consultation, so a visitor always knows the smallest next step.
• A journal with six essays a prospective client would actually read, including ADU rules in Austin and how to decide remodel versus rebuild.
• A client portal behind a Raytha sign-in, with project rooms showing phase, progress, next milestone and weekly updates, plus permit drawings and material palettes with versions.
• A contact page framed as booking a consultation, an accessibility statement and search across houses, services, journal and consultations.

The design aims at the standard of an award-winning architecture portfolio: Georgia serif display type, generous whitespace, a limestone-and-clay palette, squared corners, and large generated elevation drawings and plan boards in a consistent style, so every image is license-free. On a 390px phone the navigation becomes a menu button and the project grids stack cleanly.

How projects, services and the client portal work

1. Each project is a content item with a project-type dropdown and a relationship field to its client, so a client page lists its house and a project shows its homeowners without duplicating anything. The portfolio filters by type with a query parameter, and service pages pull in the houses that used that service.
2. Services and journal entries relate to the architect's profile, so a service shows who leads it (Elena, always) and her about page lists her writing.
3. The client portal uses Raytha user groups: one group per active client and one for the architect. Each project and file names its client's group, and the templates check CurrentUser.UserGroups on the server. Signed out, the portal shows a lock and a sign-in prompt. Signed in, a homeowner sees only their own project and drawings, and another client's project stays hidden. The architect sees every project.

Try it yourself

The rebuild kit is in the public RaythaHQ/raytha-examples repository. Point the Raytha CLI at a fresh instance, run the example's build.sh, and you get the same content types, templates, pages and seed content. You can also deploy Raytha on Railway from the template to try a blank site quickly.