MACE (Metadata for Architectural Contents in Europe) is a pan-european initiative to interconnect and disseminate digital information about architecture.
The project connects various repositories of architectural knowledge and enriches their contents with metadata. The result are unique services for searching and browsing architectural contents, for instance, by conceptual connection, geography, language. Besides general administrative and organizational tasks, I have been responsible for:
European comission
Half-time position at FH Potsdam
Concept and styling of the MACE portal
The MACE portal is the central access point for MACE services for finding and enriching architectural learning resources. Together with the project partners, we worked out an extensible portal concept based on flexible interface widgets. We delivered concept papers, wireframes, layouts and fully functional UI implementations, using DHTML/AJAX and Flash.
Interactive visualizations
Radial tree visualizations
The MACE classification glossary plays a central role in content retrieval and access. The browsing of the vocabulary and associated contents is supported by an interactive visualization of the terms and their relations. I extended the classical radial tree layout towards a structured tag cloud, where more frequently applied terms are presented larger. Additionally, aligned splines make it easier to grasp the tree structure and bring an organic look-and-feel into the visualization.
Elastic lists for architectural contents
This Elastic Lists adaptation for browsing architectural projects allows to search MACE contents over multiple independent dimensions in parallel, such as finding all modernistic buildings in Central Europe. The original framework has been extended with a map facet widget as well as a timeline slider control. The current demo prototype uses data from the free online database freebase, but will soon be connected to the MACE infrastructure. The pictures are pulled dynamically from flickr using the fantastic flickrwrappr script, which automatically expands a search in multiple languages, and verifies search results also with geo-coordinates.
Maeve
At the Venice Biennale, the mæve installation connects the entries of the EveryVille student competition and puts them into the larger context of MACE content and metadata. By placing physical project cards on an interactive surface, the visitors can explore an organic network of projects, people and media. mæve has been designed and developed by a team of students and researchers under the lead of Prof. Boris Müller and Till Nagel. I initiated the project, consulted the design and development team, and realized the side projections.