Castor Design finds inspiration with the gigashelf

Castor, a multidisciplinary Canadian furniture design company, wanted a website that would not only showcase its work but also the quirky and distinctly Canadian inspiration behind its pieces.

The agency created a website navigation page called the "Castor GigaShelf" that paid homage to a small shelf found inside the Castor studio filled with objects designers use for inspiration. Taxi took a photo of the shelf and blew it up, allowing users to get a detailed close-up look at the inspiration behind the work.

The GigaShelf image was developed using a GigaPan camera, originally built for the Mars Exploration Rover Mission and capable of shooting images with billions of pixels. The camera was used to photograph the actual shelf and the images were stitched together to create the website navigation page. This was the first commercial application of the GigaPan camera.

Users can explore every object on the shelf, many of which are also links to information about the company. The actual products and furniture are displayed using large, ultra-high-definition photos that are linked to objects on the shelf or accessed through a simple pull-down menu.

The mobile version is a virtual life-size replica of the same shelf that people can access through their mobile devices, using the accelerometer and gyroscope to turn it into a virtual viewfinder for navigating the site. The site won at the 2012 Coupe International Design and Image Awards, and was shortlisted for a Cannes Lion.