The Clients
The Ralph Bunche Institute engages in research, graduate training, and public education in international affairs, with a particular focus on multilateralism and the institutions that make collective action possible. Named for the Nobel Peace Prize-winning diplomat and UN undersecretary-general, RBI operates with the conviction that global problems require global frameworks.

The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect exists to turn a principle into practice. Born from the 2005 World Summit agreement that nations bear a responsibility to protect populations from genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, the GCR2P works to catalyze the international action that makes that commitment real rather than rhetorical.

The Challenge
Both organizations deal in complexity — policy, history, legal frameworks, ongoing crises, multilateral institutions — and both needed sites that could hold a serious, data-intensive body of work without becoming impenetrable. The GCR2P in particular required robust archive management: the kind of content that accumulates over time and needs to remain findable, structured, and current.

Our Approach
The design process was a collaboration between Betsy Vardell, Winterhouse and Kevin Smith. Smith's designs appear on both sites. RubyStudio handled implementation and powered each with SmallBlock CMS — providing the editorial infrastructure that organizations producing ongoing research and documentation actually need. Building the two simultaneously allowed for shared thinking about structure and architecture while preserving the distinct identities the two organizations required.

The Outcome
Two sites, built in parallel, for work that doesn't stop. The archives grow. The research continues.