Natural History Museum The life of the blue whale

Insight

Bring the Natural History Museum directly into peoples’ living rooms.

A web experience that is both informative and visually stunning, presented so that it captures the essence of the exhibition itself through a content-led 3D recreation of the Hintze Hall. Visitors can see the blue whale through various media and from different points of view, just as if they were physically in the museum.

Idea

Driven by image and content, rather than data.

AKQA Leap capture the sheer beauty of the project through maximum rendering control, building the website using vanilla HTML, CSS (via SASS) and ES6 JavaScript, framework-free.

The website is fully responsive and uses debounced event handling for smooth parallax effects. URL management allows for easy sharing and search engine visibility. All pages are bundled statically for simple platform-independent deployment.

Online visitors immerse themselves in the Natural History Museum, discovering the breathtaking ceiling of Hintze Hall, the collections and depths of the ocean, discovering the true magnificence of the blue whale.

Impact

A forward-thinking solution that has positioned the Natural History Museum as a leader in its field.

By utilising the latest technologies, enhancing physical exhibitions with digital ones, London’s much-loved attraction creates the best experiences for its patrons.

The site’s impact on all major browsers had greater responsiveness, as well as a large increase in media queries. All underpinned by cross-browser support via tools such as autoprefixer, browserslist and babel.

Bringing the project online in a dynamic way opens up the exhibition to an entirely new audience whilst increasing attendance to the museum itself.