On 21 February 2003, a 64-year-old doctor from Guangdong, China checked into room 911 of the Metropole Hotel in Hong Kong to attend a family wedding. The next morning he woke up with a fever and admitted himself to the nearest hospital.
Over the following days, 16 guests who'd stayed on the 9th floor of the hotel that night boarded flights home—to the Philippines, Singapore, Canada, Vietnam, Australia and the USA. They took SARS with them. What happened in that corridor became the index event for a global pandemic.
This interactive website accompanied an art exhibition exploring those first moments of outbreak. The artist wanted something that felt more like a documentary experience than a traditional website—something you'd explore on your phone, moving through the story at your own pace.
We built the entire experience in React with TypeScript, designed mobile-first. The navigation isn't traditional menus and pages—it's more like chapters in a documentary, each revealing another layer of the story.
The technical challenge was making it feel cinematic while still being accessible. Smooth transitions between sections, carefully timed reveals of information, and a design that gets out of the way so the story can breathe.
Audio plays a key role. Ambient soundscapes and carefully chosen effects create atmosphere without overwhelming the content. We spent considerable time on the pacing—how long to let each piece of information sit before moving on.
The exhibition and website received critical attention, particularly given its timing—developed during the COVID-19 pandemic, it gave visitors a way to understand how quickly a virus can spread from a single hotel corridor to the entire world.
It's the kind of project that reminds you what the web can be when it's not just another marketing site.
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