- Project: Just/Burgeff Architekten Website
- Date: September 2009 - October 2009
- Client: Just/Burgeff Architekten GmbH, Frankfurt
- Tasks: Concept, Design, Programming
Architect Websites usually run into serious problems when it comes to showing the work in all its beauty and at the same time revealing the details that make it special. But presenting large images leads to longer loading times, providing many images to endless clicking.
Using the ingenious Open Zoom Library combined with our own Deep Zoom Slicer we were able to create a website that shows – well – nearly only huge photographs. Only a small triangle hosting the navigation is presented, jumping into service only when needed. The images are processed with a principle called “pyramid image processing” to have them available in different sizes.
The creative idea behind it all was letting the architects more or less design the webpage themselves, make it look like new every time they upload new images. Even on the few content pages (one can’t seem to get along without) the background image shines through – on the Imprint page the background is a live online road map zooming in from Europe scale right down to street level showing the exact place where the J/B A offices reside.
But just as beauty is transient, the memory of the images seen on the website evaporates over time. But don’t worry, even though the whole system is made in Flash, the URLs of the projects are still permalinks, so you can bookmark them and get back exactly where you left off. This and the fallback HTML version is something that also search engines will like. Because we think machines deserve beautiful architecture just as much as we do.