In 2017, the design department of Folkwang University moved into a new building on Zeche Zollverein in Essen, one of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Folkwang University’s website has been a continuous topic of discussion as it doesn’t represent the design department particularly well. To fill that gap, we decided to conceptualize a website that allows people to view the campus in 360°, similar to Google Maps. It’s also a platform for students to showcase their work, further giving insight into what happens at our faculty.
We worked on the concept and design, and gathered the contents for over a semester; this included taking 360°-images of almost the entire university (once in its 'regular' state, once at the annual exhibition of student projects called Rundgang), connecting them and compiling information, asking staff to write descriptive texts of themselves or writing them ourselves, asking students for their projects to showcase in the archive, and making a 3D-Model of the building to create a navigation map. Then we began coding, our code snippets were them embedded into the content man agement system Processwire by Christin Heinze.
I was heavily involved in the conceptualization, figuring out how to structure the website and what aesthetic and functional demands it must meet. The choice and use of typefaces, their licensing, icon-design and the introductory tutorial were also my contributions. I assisted while taking the 360°-photos of the university and linked them together.
Unfortunately, the website was never launched (still hurts).
