MHN

MHN brings natural history into the browser through a sequence of eras, stories, images, and interactive objects. Visitors can move through the collection, rotate a specimen, and open the details behind an exhibit without leaving the experience.

The challenge was to give a varied collection a coherent home. A photograph, a video, a long description, and a detailed 3D model each need a different presentation, while the navigation needs to remain familiar throughout.

Working under the supervision of Grzegorz Kowalski, I developed the experience from its first ideas through launch. Regular conversations with the museum shaped the work: we reviewed progress together, responded to feedback, and refined the experience around the collection and the people exploring it.

A collection of large GLB files needs more than a viewer. It needs a plan for when models load, how they are reused, and when the browser can release their resources. The 3D component loads separately from the page, and scene creation is tied to the exhibit’s visibility.

A shared loader deduplicates model requests and keeps a bounded cache of ten entries. The viewer supports Draco geometry and KTX2 textures, adjusts rendering resolution, and cleans up rendering resources when a scene is released. These choices address network, memory, and graphics costs without asking every exhibit to stay active at once.

Desktop layouts can place an object beside its story. On a phone, the media and copy stack, with additional exhibit information available through dedicated detail views. Camera framing can be adjusted for individual models and mobile screens, so a single set of camera settings does not have to suit every object.

Polish and English share the same presentation system. Reusable templates handle images, galleries, video, quotations, and 3D exhibits, keeping the collection consistent as its content changes.

The result is the public experience at mhn.pan.pl: a place to explore the museum’s material through both reading and interaction. The Wawel model below offers a small example of that interaction within this case study.