Project details
For the Art & Science master's programme at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, the website has been built anew. The content that had grown over nearly twenty years was fully migrated, newly interconnected and brought into a fast, low-maintenance presence.
At its heart is the archive: around 1,700 entries, among them about 660 student works, roughly 680 events and exhibitions and nearly 300 people involved. Works, field trips and exhibitions are linked to the people, images and themes involved, so the programme can be read not only year by year but also along people, places and thematic threads.
Technically the site runs on the flat-file system Kirby: without a database server it is fast, robust and easy to maintain. Images are delivered server-side as WebP in suitable sizes, a crop and zoom control sets the focus for each image; editing is role-based with traceable revision states. One focus of the work was the search: rather than forcing every query onto a server round trip, a compact static index sits ready and runs directly in the browser – around 1,660 entries and about 290 places are findable instantly and practically without delay, whether by name, place or theme.
Added to this are thematic filters by format and medium as well as a view that tells the path through each annual theme: from the first field trip to the completed annual exhibition in summer. Sitemap, structured data and clean metadata open up the holdings for search engines. In this way the site presents the programme to the outside and makes the entire archive searchable in one place.
Technical implementation: Virgil Widrich.
Graphic supervision: Ivonne Gracia Murillo.
