Thanks Michael, I was hoping that wouldn’t be the case. I understand why from an SEO perspective one URL per page is good, and i think it’s ok if that project is accessible at /projects/projectX.
However I was hoping was that the custom post type could be reached through taxonomies which could then be used to show the state in the navigational elements to reflect the drill down from either “clients” or “mediums” which it does right up to the last page displaying the custom post type.