Genre change in architecture: A diachronic study of promotional project descriptions

This article investigates the diachronic evolution of the architectural project description (PD), a genre that emerged in the late 19th century to promote completed projects and attract future commissions. Drawing on two corpora—PDs published in brochures (1970–1995) and those published online (1996–2020)—we examine how this genre has changed in terms of structure, multimodal features, and linguistic characteristics. Combining several methods, we conducted a contextual analysis through interviews with practitioners, a multimodal analysis of 60 representative texts, a moves analysis informed by genre theory, and a corpus-driven linguistic study. Our findings reveal significant shifts: PDs have become longer and more promotional, increasingly emphasising collaboration, sustainability, competition and innovation. Linguistic markers such as attitudinal adjectives, verbs with a positive semantic prosody, modal verbs ‘will’ and ‘can’, the pronoun ‘we’, as well as quotations and slogans are more frequent in recent texts, reflecting a rhetorical shift towards self-promotion and branding. Multimodal enhancements, including colour, photography, interactive elements, and navigational tools, are more prevalent in digital PDs. While many of these transformations are linked to the digital medium, they also reflect broader socio-professional shifts: increased competition, the normalisation of marketing practices, and the rise of a neoliberal managerial discourse. Concerns about stylistic homogenisation of the genre emerge. We argue that future research must consider the implications of artificial intelligence, as firms begin to integrate AI tools into design and communication processes, potentially reshaping the genre further.