Copperfield Block Management: the site reads like a drawing, not a brochure
Concept build. Copperfield Block Management is an invented firm. This was made to show how we approach a property brief, so nothing here is a client result and no figure describes a real business.
The brief we set ourselves
A firm managing 62 leasehold blocks and around 2,900 units across Greater Manchester, for an audience that has usually been let down by a managing agent before signing up with this one. Two readers, one document: the RMC directors and freeholders who instruct the firm, and the leaseholders who live under the service and mostly want to know who fixes what and how fast.
Block management is a distrusted category. The instinct is to sell warmth: smiling staff, a "we care" strapline. We didn't think that would survive five minutes from someone who's already had a bad agent. The brief we set ourselves was accountability, stated in writing, not reassurance stated in adjectives.
What we built
A title block instead of a hero. The firm's name sits in a ruled box with the discipline, a sheet reference and a revision date beside it, in the register of an actual architectural drawing sheet rather than a marketing header. No rounded corners, no drop shadows, no card grid anywhere on the page: the whole thing is built from hairlines, dimension lines and annotation, because that's how a document earns trust in this trade.
The photograph of the block sits in its own hard-ruled frame with a dimension line underneath giving its notional scale, not behind the headline type. Consolas carries every label, dimension and figure in the service-charge table; Candara carries the headings; Corbel carries the running copy. Three real system fonts, no Inter.
The building section
The signature piece is a hand-drawn SVG cross-section of a mid-rise block: pitched roof, floor slabs, a lift shaft running the full height, a plant room, a basement bin store, the entrance lobby, the grounds. Seven zones, drawn as real architectural geometry rather than a row of icons standing in for one.
Selecting a zone (by click, by Enter or Space on focus, or by arrow key through the group) highlights that level in the drawing and swaps an annotated side rail: what the service charge actually covers there, who is responsible for it (freeholder, RMC or leaseholder), how often it's inspected, and the statutory point that applies where one exists. Section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 for the plant room's major works, the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 for the lobby's fire doors, the Building Safety Act 2022 where a block meets the higher-risk threshold. Every level is a properly labelled control in a radio group, individually focusable, fully keyboard-reachable, defaulting to the entrance lobby on load.
Details that did the work
- One drawing-red, used only for annotation leaders, callouts and active states, checked by computed contrast rather than eyeballed
- Service-charge table published with real line items and honest ranges, not "on application"
- The "changing managing agent" section states the RTM and tribunal process plainly, including that Copperfield can't promise to be free of an existing agent's notice period
- Emergency and non-emergency reporting split with response windows we could actually hold, not a blanket 24/7 claim
- Every character and label in the cross-section carries an accessible name; the SVG itself is never marked as a flat image, so its interactive children stay reachable
Where it stands
Audited at 88 out of 100 across usability, uniqueness, beauty and freedom from generic AI patterns. The honest weakness is proportion: the cross-section, which is doing the real work of the page, sits fairly small inside a lot of empty drafting-blue frame around it. A second pass would give the drawing more of the page rather than leaving it to share the sheet with so much open ground.