‘The Web is Not a Tree’: Information Architecture and the Navigational Topology of the World Wide Web

The discipline of information architecture, which borrows many of its methods and metaphors from traditional architectural practice, has so far remained largely outside architectural discourse. I examine the profession and practice of web-based ‘information architecture’ through the lens of methods and theories relating to the built environment and conclude that, although the metaphors of architecture used, for example, in the design of graphical user interfaces, have been largely unsuccessful, topological theories of architecture may offer the potential to better understand the deep structure of information as it is navigated using networked structures which are common to web-based technologies.