We make architecture legible and engaging for more people.
We want to gather places, stories, opinion, and articles about the built world in one place. Otherwise that knowledge stays scattered across books, reports, and individual websites.
The map shows what's around the corner and lets you log visits. But the larger aim is to spark curiosity about the built city, and make it easier to see, understand, and talk about the buildings around you.
Architecture is all around us, whether we're in a big city or out in the countryside. Learning to read built environments makes the world more interesting: you understand why places look the way they do, you start to see wholes, and you pick out the stories embedded in what's been built. Architecture mirrors its own time and the ideas that shaped it, and is, in that sense, an important historical document of what happened - locally and in the world.
We share a deep interest in architecture and art, but couldn't find a platform for sharing experiences, saving images, and navigating cities we hadn't visited before. Nothing did for architecture what Letterboxd does for film. So we decided to build the framework ourselves and let the content grow with its users.
There's also a more urgent reason to care about the built world: today we have to look after our resources and make use of what has already been built. Understanding your immediate surroundings is one step in that direction. My hope is that the map lifts up places that aren't the obvious destinations - those stories are often just as interesting. Knowing about different kinds of environments creates respect for the people who built, used, and shaped them, and makes it easier to see the value in things you might otherwise have walked past.
In the app you explore buildings on location or from a desk. Log visits and go deeper into what's around you: who designed it, which movement it belongs to, what the story behind it is. At launch the catalogue holds 10,000+ places across 250 cities, and the knowledge base keeps growing through a community where users contribute places, information, and photographs.
We build Acarta together with a network of architects, conservators, and photographers, alongside associations and institutions working in heritage conservation. The aim is a living field guide where architecture finds a voice. A place for conversation, opinion, and discovery.
Adam Strandberg
Designer and engineer with fifteen years of building digital products. Has led around forty projects as creative director, lead designer, and product strategist. Alongside the day job he has a long-standing interest in how people interact with different environments and how new behaviours take shape. Drives Acarta's strategy, platform, and design, with the ambition of making architecture legible outside the profession.
Evelina Strandberg
Architect and heritage expert. Master's in architecture from KTH, with studies at Tokyo City University and ENSA Paris-Belleville, and a postgraduate degree in restoration from the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. Alongside her practical work as an architect, she has experience in research communication within heritage studies. Shapes Acarta's editorial direction, from contemporary architecture to the existing built environment.
The press kit has the fact sheet, boilerplate, logos, screenshots, and reviewer access.