Case Studies
Project Rockefeller: A School You Can Scroll Through
Our new concept turns a Munich Mittelschule into a 3D paper model: scroll and the building opens floor by floor, from the classrooms down to the stage.
Most school websites are a list of PDFs and a phone number. We asked a different question: what if parents and students could actually walk through the school before they ever set foot in it? The result is Project Rockefeller, a full 3D concept website for the Mittelschule an der Rockefellerstraße in Munich, built by us and now live as a Fozmu Studios project.
It's a concept and a staff preview, not the school's official website. But everything you see is modelled on the real building.
A real building, built from paper
The first version had a generic school. Then we were sent photos of the real one, and we rebuilt it from scratch. The long four-storey block with its colourful louvre fins is split the way the real building is: about 70 % Mittelschule on the left in yellow, orange and red, and 30 % Grundschule on the right in greens. Around it sit the purple wing with the basketball court on its roof, the courtyard with oval lawns, picnic tables and umbrellas, and a street with cars and a bus.
Everything is made in a soft, papercraft style and rendered live in the browser with three.js. There are no videos or pre-rendered images doing the work. The fins even turn in a wave, faster when you scroll.
Scroll inside
The heart of the page is a section called "Ein Blick hinein" ("A look inside"). As you scroll, the roof lifts off, then the 3rd, 2nd and 1st floors, until you're standing in the ground floor. A small card tracks which level you're looking at.
- Upper floors: a Lernhaus at each end, classrooms in between. On the 1st floor you'll find the headteacher's office, the Sekretariat and two computer rooms. The 2nd floor has two kitchens, a technology workshop and the music room.
- Two staircases: a yellow-orange-red one for the Mittelschule, a green one for the Grundschule, running through every floor.
- Ground floor: the stage for the school band, the Mensa, a modern glass Kiosk and a Mehrzweckraum (multi-purpose room) whose sign switches between the boys' and the girls' break.
A campus that's alive
We didn't want it to feel like a slideshow with four slides, so the world never stops moving. Students wander the courtyard all the time. In the community section the upper floors lift away and everyone walks inside to gather in front of the stage. The values rise from the roof as three banners, a giant paper calendar flips through the dates, and confetti falls from the roof when the school's awards appear.
The sports grounds are big, like the real ones: two courts with teams chasing the ball, a beach volleyball court on sand where the ball flies over the net, and a four-lane running track with runners doing laps.
Made for phones too
On a phone, cards slide up from the bottom while the 3D scene stays visible above them. A menu button opens every section, and the tour card shrinks to show only the floor you're on.
Loading that means something
The page opens with a loading screen that counts from 0 to 100 % based on what is actually happening: images, fonts, building the school and preparing the graphics. If anything takes too long, it never gets stuck. After that comes a short Fozmu Studios notice before you enter.
There's more
Alongside the main concept we built a German beta page for the school's Streitschlichtung (peer mediation) and student council, where hundreds of red and blue shards, a conflict, slowly come together into the school's bird as you scroll.
Open the concept, scroll slowly and take the tour. It works best on a laptop, but it's just as fun on your phone.