The original site was about to disappear. Ai Weiwei's Fairytale Project—a 2007 art piece where 1,001 Chinese citizens traveled to Kassel, Germany for Documenta 12—had been archived on a PHP site that was being deprecated by its host. The Slought Foundation needed someone to rebuild it before the hosting shut down.
For many participants, this was their first time leaving China. Their first time on an airplane. The archive held their stories, photos, and locations—a cultural document that couldn't be lost.
What I Built
I rebuilt the entire site from scratch in 3 weeks.
Extraction and analysis: I pulled all the project files from the existing host, mapped the site structure, and documented how the original PHP logic worked.
One-to-one rebuild: I recreated the site exactly as it existed—same structure, same functionality, same trilingual support (Chinese, English, German)—but in static HTML that would work on any modern host indefinitely.
Map replacement: The original used Google Maps to plot all 1,001 participants on an interactive map. The API had expired and the nonprofit couldn't afford a new key. I replaced it with an open-source map service that preserved the functionality at no cost.
Content preservation: 1,001 participant entries. 4,898 curated images. Three languages. All migrated and verified.
The Impact
- Preserved a cultural archive that would have been lost to deprecated infrastructure
- Future-proofed the site with static HTML—no PHP dependencies, no API keys to expire
- Maintained full functionality including trilingual support and interactive mapping
- Delivered in 3 weeks on a nonprofit timeline and budget
Skills
Web development, legacy system migration, problem-solving under constraints, nonprofit/freelance work