With one exception, every entry under Browse By in the Inspirations sidebar is a search box that has been filled in for you. Selecting Concrete under Materials runs a search for the word concrete against the text held for each image. It does not narrow the page to images tagged concrete, because no such filter exists for materials.
That is why a category can return images with no visible connection to it.
The one real filter is Content Types
Content Types works differently. Every image is filed under exactly one type the first time it is read: floor plan, section, elevation, 3D render, site plan, diagram, presentation board, collage, photo or other. Choosing one of those genuinely restricts the page to images of that type.
Disciplines, Materials, Building Typology and Architectural Styles are all searches. So are the popular tags across the top, and so is selecting a tag underneath an image.
Why a one-word search pulls in unrelated images
- The text being searched is a machine's reading of the picture, not a label from its author: a short description, up to 30 tags, and any words readable inside the image itself. A presentation board with CONCRETE printed across it matches a search for concrete, whatever the board is actually about.
- Your word is also matched by meaning. Images close in subject come back even when the word appears nowhere in their text. That is what makes browsing by a term like Brutalism work at all, and it is also what lets a loosely connected image sit near the top.
- A tag is one reading of one image. Nothing checks it against the project it came from, so it can be confidently wrong.
Narrowing a category that comes back too broad
- Type extra words into the search box on top of the category. The words combine, and a two-word query is matched far more tightly than a single word, which is usually too common to rank well. How search ranks results explains why.
- Add a content type to a keyword search. Concrete with Sections is a much smaller set than either on its own.
- Search by colour when what you are after is a look rather than a subject.
- If the Photos content type shows you a different set each time you open it, that is expected. Above 50,000 images of one type the filter works from a portion of them rather than all of them, and it is not the same portion every request. Photos is the only type large enough for this to show. Keywords narrow it more reliably.