Sichuan University Campus Culture — Digital Creative Interactive Exhibition
A whole campus, held in your hand.
We draw representative architecture and landscape imagery from the Wangjiang, Jiang’an and Huaxi campuses, reweaving the red gate, the ginkgo path, Jiang’an Library, the long bridge over Jiang’an Lake and the Huaxi Clock Tower into one continuous three-dimensional campus. It is not a replica of the real map, but a digital reconstruction of Sichuan University memory.
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Because campus culture lives in specific spatial memories — and those memories deserve to be read, experienced and shared.
Campus culture often lives in concrete, intimate spatial memories: the ceremony of passing through a gate, the turning seasons beneath ginkgo trees, the sky reflected in the library’s glass curtain wall, lotus leaves and a long bridge on the lake, and the steady silhouette of a clock tower. They belong to different campuses and different eras, yet together they form how people know Sichuan University.
This project organises those memories as a work of digital cultural creativity. Rather than mechanically miniaturising every building onto one board, we extract each site’s most recognisable structures and reorganise them along a continuous path — from the entrance to the lakeshore, from contemporary architecture to the historic clock tower. The resulting scene preserves each landmark’s identity while forming a campus journey that can be read and experienced.
These figures describe the content structure of this project; they do not represent the actual number of campuses or any surveying accuracy.
Four columns and three bays in vermilion and grey tile — the ceremonial entrance where the campus narrative begins.
A blue-grey curtain wall and curved wings within a warm stone frame — an open, composed space of knowledge.
Grey brick, a red gallery and double eaves — a steady vertical silhouette watching over the campus.
Open water, lotus clusters and a natural shoreline, crossed by a bridge that extends in repeating modules.
DESIGN PHILOSOPHY
A real campus is organised by distance; a cultural-creative model is organised by the intensity of memory. We preserve each site’s most recognisable outlines, materials and atmosphere, then let them meet again within a single miniature landscape.
Principle 01
Wangjiang, Jiang’an and Huaxi cease to be separate geographic coordinates and become chapters of one cultural narrative. The model preserves each landmark’s identity without pretending to be the university’s real master plan.
Principle 02
The red gate is the single entrance. Continuous paving links the ginkgo trees, the library, the lakeshore, the long bridge and the clock tower in sequence, shaping the viewing order into a complete experience: entering, walking, learning, lingering and watching over.
Principle 03
The red gate and the Huaxi Clock Tower carry traditional structures and historical memory; Jiang’an Library, the lake and the long bridge express the openness of the contemporary campus. Scale, colour and negative space hold the two in balance.
Principle 04
Ginkgo trees guide the path, willows soften the water’s edge, lotus leaves build the near-shore layer and shoreline stones complete the natural border. Planting is not decoration filling empty space — it is a structural element that organises the scene.
Principle 05
The model is first read, rotated and taken apart as a digital exhibit on the web; through AR it then enters desks and real environments, allowing cultural content to extend naturally from the screen into space.
We respect the recognisable character of each building, and we acknowledge the limits of our sources; we recompose campus memory without mistaking creative condensation for real geography; we use digital technology not for spectacle, but to make culture, structure and process easier to see.
CRAFT & MATERIAL
The materials do not pursue photographic replication; they adopt a restrained, unified miniature language. Traditional buildings keep layered vermilion, grey brick and tiled roofs; contemporary architecture uses warm stone and blue-grey glass; the landscape is harmonised in lake blue, ginkgo gold and lotus green.
The stimulus of highly saturated red is dialled down to a warm, composed vermilion, expressing the ceremonial character of the university’s historic architecture.
Red gate, clock tower gallery
Hierarchy is conveyed through differences in lightness rather than complex textures, so the architecture keeps a clear silhouette even at miniature scale.
Traditional roofs, clock tower body, structural edging
A transitional colour between traditional reds and greys and the modern blue glass, establishing a steady, quiet, scholarly temperament.
Jiang’an Library, plazas, model plinth
Slight reflection and translucency express the openness of contemporary architecture, while avoiding a mirror effect strong enough to seize the visual centre.
Library central curtain wall and curved wings
The water surface stays open and restrained; planting uses varied density to build the rhythm of seasons and paths, without screening the architecture behind dense vegetation.
Lake surface, ginkgo, lotus, willows and shoreline
FIVE CAMPUS MEMORIES
The five scenes do not correspond to real geographic adjacency. Within the work they carry five narrative roles: entering, walking, learning, coexisting and watching over.
An open portal of four columns and three bays, vermilion timberwork and a grey-tiled roof forms the most immediate identification of the campus. It is a gate, and also the first step from reality into the cultural narrative.
Six ginkgo trees form three paired rows of golden guidance. Trunks, canopies, tree pits and fallen leaves together build the bodily sense of moving through the campus, so the landmarks are no longer merely juxtaposed.
A central blue-grey glass curtain wall, curved wings and a warm ivory stone frame form an open yet composed image of contemporary architecture. Broad steps and a forecourt connect the space of knowledge to the campus path.
The open water gives the architecture and paths room to breathe; lotus clusters of varied density preserve the lake’s openness, and the long bridge extends beyond the frame in repeating modules, suggesting that campus culture continues to grow.
A grey-brick shaft, red gallery, double eaves and four clock faces form a steady vertical silhouette. It answers the library’s contemporary volume and closes the loop of the campus journey between history and the present.
INTERACTIVE 3D
Drag to change your viewing direction, scroll or pinch to adjust the distance, and tap a landmark to focus on it. What you see is not an isolated model, but the spatial relationship between five sets of campus memories.
AUGMENTED REALITY
AR lets the same digital campus leave the screen and rest on a desk, a plinth or a real environment. Move around the model and observe the relationship between architecture and lakeshore from different heights — feel how the miniature’s scale changes once it truly enters space.
Tap the button below and allow the device to start AR.
Move the camera slowly towards a well-lit, flat surface.
Once the plane is recognised, tap to place the model, then pinch to adjust its size and orientation.
Move around the model and view the full scene from the entrance, the lakeshore and the clock tower.
Stay aware of your surroundings while using AR — do not operate the device while walking on stairs, roads or in crowded areas.
FROM EVIDENCE TO EXPERIENCE
The project is not only the final model, but a traceable, verifiable and extensible creative path. Every step preserves its inputs, judgements and outputs, so that design evidence and creative inference can be clearly distinguished.
Collect photographs of the buildings and landscape, recording sources, viewing directions and the information each can support; whatever cannot be confirmed from the material is explicitly marked as inference.
Extract outlines, proportions, roof relationships and material character from front, side, top and detail views, establishing a unified modelling reference.
Divide each building into independently editable layers — plinth, main body, roof, curtain wall, gallery and ornament — with clear semantic naming.
Reorganise the cross-campus elements with a continuous path, shoreline curves and a unified scale, so that the landmarks form a complete viewing sequence.
Generate models of different complexity for desktop, mobile and low-performance devices, reducing loading pressure while preserving each landmark’s recognisability.
Convert the models into formats readable by browsers and mobile devices, and publish after asset verification, version management and device testing.
PROJECT FEATURES
Unconstrained by real distances, the representative imagery of Wangjiang, Jiang’an and Huaxi is reorganised by cultural role and the intensity of memory.
From photographic research and structural inference to component breakdown and final assembly, the basis and trade-offs behind the model are shown in full.
Any browser can read the static content; capable devices view the 3D model in real time, and supported phones can step into AR.
Architecture, materials and content are organised modularly, so new campus landmarks, historical stories and cultural-creative forms can be added over time.
DIGITAL SPECIFICATIONS
Current dimensions and architectural proportions serve digital presentation and spatial-relationship verification; they should not be read as official surveying data or production dimensions for physical products.
WHERE IT CAN LIVE
A digital campus is not bound to a pedestal — it can be exhibited, taught, remembered and extended.
In the university history museum, orientation and graduation exhibitions and campus open days, large-screen 3D presentation and mobile AR provide an interactive experience.
Introduce the university’s spatial character through a cross-campus cultural path, helping audiences new to Sichuan University quickly form an overall impression.
The familiar gate, ginkgo trees, library, lake and clock tower are recomposed into a campus memory that can be kept and shared for years.
Building on the digital model, continue to explore physical ornaments, modular architecture, desktop landscapes, commemorative packaging and limited themed editions.
Serve as a complete case in courses on architectural analysis, 3D modelling, interaction design and digital cultural communication, demonstrating the full process from source material to finished work.
FAQ
On authenticity, scale, devices and future plans — answered as they are.
No. The work extracts representative buildings and landscapes from the Wangjiang, Jiang’an and Huaxi campuses and reorganises them through cultural narrative. It preserves each landmark’s recognisable character, but it does not correspond to the real campus master plan.
They carry the roles of entering, walking, learning, coexisting and watching over, presenting traditional architecture, the contemporary campus, the natural landscape and a sense of historical time at once.
The current model is built from photographs, public sources and relative architectural relationships; some dimensions are design inferences. Once official drawings or surveyed data become available, they can be calibrated uniformly.
To keep loading fast and interaction smooth, the site selects a model of appropriate complexity for each device. The core architecture and overall spatial relationships remain the same on every device.
Yes. The project introduction, design process and static presentations on this page do not depend on AR; devices with WebGL support can also use the 3D viewer directly.
Yes. The model and content are organised modularly, so new Sichuan University buildings, personal stories, historical material and physical cultural-creative products can be added over time.
The formal release will list public sources, the team’s own photography and licensed material in a source statement. Anything that cannot be confirmed will be explicitly marked as design inference — conceptual content is never presented as verified fact.
CONTACT & COLLABORATION
If you hold architectural material, historical clues or more complete campus imagery related to this project, you are welcome to help us refine the work; if you would like to use it for campus exhibitions, teaching demonstrations or cultural-creative collaboration, please get in touch with the team.
Or email us directly: contact@scu.aoelysia.cc