Massive congratulations to RESN & GETTY for winning Site of the Month November 2023 with SCULPTING HARMONY, thanks for all the votes and tweets.
Sculpting Harmony is a digital exhibition from Getty celebrating the 20th Anniversary of Frank Gehry’s iconic Walt Disney Concert Hall. Presenting sweeping views of over 150 models, sketches, and photographs from the Frank O. Gehry papers, viewers can explore new interviews with Frank Gehry, interactive 3D media and novel scholarship. The digital exhibition provides a captivating glimpse into the innovative work that went into the design of a building that is sometimes called “the living room of Los Angeles”.
Background
In 2017, the Getty Research Institute (GRI) took a significant step by acquiring the Frank Gehry Papers. This extensive collection spans from 1954 to 1988 and encompasses a wealth of materials such as sketches, models, photographs, and videos. To preserve these invaluable resources, the GRI undertook a massive digitization effort, transforming hundreds of thousands of items into digital format. The goal was twofold: to protect an essential part of architectural heritage and to make it accessible to a broader audience, including scholars and enthusiasts in the field of architecture.
In 2023, Resn joined the project at the invitation of the GRI, an interactive exhibition focused on one of Gehry's most iconic creations, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. The project represents the culmination of over seven years dedicated to archiving, 3D imaging, and digitization, combined with two years of thorough research and narrative development, all leading up to six months of focused design and development work. Unveiled in October 2023, the exhibition provides a deep dive into Gehry's creative process, offering visitors an engaging and immersive experience that highlights the intersection of art and innovation central to Gehry's enduring impact.
As one of the most celebrated architects of our era, Frank Gehry needs no introduction. He counts among the greatest architectural innovators of the last century and the Walt Disney Concert Hall is one of his most iconic creations. Sculpting Harmony takes a deep dive into the creative process behind the concert hall, revealing the insights, inspirations, and innovative techniques that helped shape the concert hall's unique form. One of the design goals was to infuse Frank Gehry’s authentic style and trademark sketches into the site. We aimed to strike a balance between a vibrant celebration of Gehry’s virtuoso architectural style and an elegant, editorial approach for a scholarly audience.
“So, what I focused on when I designed the Disney Hall is the relationship of the audience to the performer and then the performer to the performer and the audience to the audience." - Frank Gehry
Capturing a Masterpiece
We gave the audience a fitting introduction to the WDCH through stunning aerial footage, allowing them to advance the camera as they scroll. To achieve this we prototyped a 3D replica of the building and mapped out the movement for seven cameras. The drone team in L.A. then used this data to precisely choreograph their flight paths around the building.
Typography
Typography became a vehicle to express ideas like the distinctive shapes of the concert hall, diverse orchestral sounds, and Gehry’s playful personality. Beginning with Sharp Grotesk as a foundation, we played with its limits, infusing motion and mirroring Frank's innovative and challenging architectural style.
Technologies
The project leverages Resn's proprietary framework as its foundation. The base architecture is built on Nuxt and VueJs, with the addition of Storyblok CMS for comprehensive content management.
Animations
For dynamic animations, we predominantly used gsap's timeline animation. We paired this with the scroll trigger feature to control the flow and progression of the animations.
With the title animations, we used a blend of SVG components and GSAP's Scroll Trigger. This stretches and contracts the vertical scale in proportion to the scroll position to achieve a seamless and fluid motion.
We used Three.js to create the 3D from Getty's exquisite scanned photogrammetry models. These models provide an authentic depiction of Frank Gehry's concepts, represented through detailed scaled replicas.
Scroll-triggered Video
The project incorporates Scrolly Video for managing scroll-triggered video playback. Although this is a great tool for creating perfect video scrubbing behaviour, challenges arose when handling larger video files. The decodeVideo feature from the WebCodecs API led to significant memory issues and a decrease in performance. Consequently, the team decided to use a more basic, fallback approach to overcome these difficulties.
Company Info
About Resn:
Resn is an award-winning creative agency reimagining digital for the future. Since 2004, Resn has been a global pioneer of immersive digital experiences for the web and beyond. From its offices in New Zealand and the Netherlands, Resn partners with some of the world's most innovative brands to tell their stories and elevate their ideas for a global audience. Discover more about Resn at https://resn.co.nz/
About the Getty:
Getty is a cultural and philanthropic institution dedicated to the presentation, conservation, and interpretation of the world’s artistic legacy. Through the collective and individual work of its constituent programs—Getty Conservation Institute, Getty Foundation, J. Paul Getty Museum, and Getty Research Institute—Getty pursues its mission in Los Angeles and throughout the world, serving both the general interested public and a wide range of professional communities in order to promote a vital civil society through an understanding of the visual arts. (copy from https://www.getty.edu/about/)
About Frank Gehry:
Frank Gehry is one of the world's most celebrated architects, renowned for his innovative and iconic designs. His portfolio includes the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, the Experience Music Project in Seattle, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, among many others.
Resn is proud to announce the release of Sculpting Harmony. We worked with @GettyMuseum to create this digital exhibition showcasing the remarkable architectural journey behind Frank Gehry's iconic Walt Disney Concert Hall.