Serralves

Museum projects are notoriously complex due to the nature of their data:

Legacy Data Migration: Successfully migrating 20 years of heterogeneous content—thousands of exhibitions, artists, and archival records—without losing SEO value or historical context.

The "Acervo" Integration: Connecting the frontend to a complex, specialized API for the museum’s permanent collection (Acervo), ensuring high-speed browsing of high-resolution artworks.

Bilingual Complexity: Maintaining a deep-level English/Portuguese experience for an international audience, including localized metadata for art researchers.

The Solution

• The Great Migration

• I architected a custom ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) pipeline to ingest two decades of legacy data into the Bondlayer engine. This involved:

  Sanitizing fragmented HTML content from older systems.

  Mapping legacy taxonomies to a modern, flexible PostgreSQL JSONB structure.

  Implementing a robust 301-redirect strategy to preserve the museum's significant SEO ranking built over 20 years.

• Specialized API Integration (The Acervo)

• The core of the museum is its collection. I developed a high-performance middleware to interface with the specialized Acervo API.

  Performance: Implemented an intelligent caching layer to ensure that thousands of high-resolution images and artist records loaded instantly.

  Searchability: Built advanced server-side filtering to allow users to explore the collection by artist, medium, period, or movement.

• Unified Web & App Ecosystem (React & React Native)

• The Website: A high-fidelity, accessible portal designed to showcase the beauty of the Serralves park and museum.

  The App: A native companion built with React Native, serving as an interactive guide for visitors exploring the 14-hectare park and the contemporary art galleries.

  The Impact Digital Continuity: Preserved the digital legacy of Serralves while providing a foundation for the next 20 years of content.

  Public Access: Opened the museum's permanent collection to the world through a fast, searchable, and beautiful digital interface.

  Operational Ease: Empowered the Serralves communication team with a unified CMS, allowing them to manage the museum's agenda and park events with unprecedented speed.

  Technical Highlights Core Stack: React (Web), React Native (Mobile), Node.js.

  Database: PostgreSQL with specialized JSONB schemas for art metadata.

  Integrations: Custom REST API middleware for museum archives (Acervo).

  Infrastructure: AWS-backed high-availability scaling to handle major exhibition launches.