Pluralistic design
The Haus der Kulturen der Welt has diversity and collaboration in its DNA. We applied this to the idea for the website relaunch.
The website for such an ambitious program and project, under the direction of the new director and chief curator of the House of World Cultures, Prof. Dr. Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, should not and cannot have a single, static design. This was our position when we pitched with other invited agencies. Elements of the site's design are constantly reassembled by an algorithm, at the beginning every hour, later in a more open rhythm.
The stable structure and the so-called superfooter, with its filterable list and preview teaser, which is used to navigate through the page, provide a quick overview and form the »safe harbor« of the experiment. This is where the entire navigation of the page takes place. Not without risk, from a UX/UI perspective. However, since control via elements at the end of the page has long been the standard on mobile (and especially in apps), we also decided on this experiment.
To our great delight, the HKW team has placed its trust in us and together we have embarked on an exciting and also conceptually and temporally challenging journey. We have reached the first stage with a soft launch for the big program conference on 14.03.2023.
The implementation took place with Magnolia. All this in close cooperation with the agency Condat, which was primarily responsible for hard backend issues. We took over concept, design, frontend, backend (via a headless accelerator) and project management. And managed the project with an unusually large team in an unusually short time.
In the coming weeks, more features and content of the site will be released and also the rules for the use of shapes, colors and fonts for the algorithm will be further refined.
The plan is to have as many different designers, artists and typographers from around the world contribute to the pool as possible.
PS: Actually, almost all screenshots make no sense at this point. Because the way the screenshots look, the site might not look again for another 27 years. Or never. But we have already explained that. And the HKW actually even more impressive itself. Thanks for that!
