Responses by Jonas Pelzer, designer and developer.

Background: Klimaschau shows the range of potential that could be tapped during the summer of 2020’s Klimasemester, a semester of courses on the climate crisis held at the university of applied sciences Fachhochschule Potsdam (FH Potsdam) in Potsdam, Germany. In order to collectively address the challenges of the climate crisis, Klimaschau seeks to develop transdisciplinary approaches and sustainable actions for the here and now.

The communication of Klimaschau was conceived and implemented under the direction of Prof. Franziska Morlok, who teaches at FH Potsdam and runs the design studio Rimini Berlin. I designed and developed the website.

Design core: The site is meant to be a digital exhibition space presenting the results of FH Potsdam’s courses on the climate crisis. It can be scrolled or dragged, horizontally or vertically, to playfully explore the different courses. Clicking one of the course teasers invokes a smooth transition, which leads to a detailed presentation of the course results. The mini map in the bottom right corner provides an overview that enables the visitor to quickly navigate to a certain point. There is also a text-based list navigation on the left.

Challenges: Time constraints, definitely. When I began working on the site about a month before publication, some stylistic decisions were already made, but there was not really a concept for the site yet. Morlok then came up with the idea of a two-direction-scrollable canvas. Based on this idea and her students’ graphic design work on the communication material for Klimaschau, I simultaneously started exploring the digital exhibition’s visual and interactive possibilities and coding the site.

Technology: The site is built with Kirby CMS. Barba.js was used to dynamically load page contents when transitioning from the canvas view to the detail pages.