Bamboo Scaffolding in HK by Marcelo Duhalde

Bamboo scaffolding is an ancient technique that is still widely used in Hong Kong. It is a temporary structure for supporting a work crew and materials to aid in the construction, maintenance and repair of buildings. Although it is common practice to be seen in construction sites in Hong Kong, we thought that this subject would be interesting for oversea readers because bamboo scaffolding is one of China's most treasured works of art that not many people in other countries around the globe know about.

During the research process, we looked into the history, where bamboos come from, the plant anatomy, training and skills, etc. One of the interesting facts is that bamboo scaffolding can be seen in a famous painting of China from the early 12th century. The painting is a very long horizontal format image. We simply applied a panel with scrollbar to let users view the painting's full-length content that's way larger than the browser window width.

The infographic mainly consists of illustrations, combined with photos and videos. Javascript libraries were used for simple interactive contents such as scroll-triggered animation. After the project was published, it drew a lot of attention and had been one of our top stories in the list for a few days. This is an evergreen story which is still driving traffic to our website today, now that we consider it a success.