In 2021, Rare Volume launched a permanent exhibit within the Torre Glòries building in Barcelona. The experience surfaces the natural and man-made phenomena that impact the lives of Barcelonians each day through a series of 4 unique visualization. The goal of the exhibit was to bring to life data we cannot see with the naked eye.

As the backend developer on this project, my role was to develop a system to gather and parse data from a multitude of different resources for integration with onscreen graphics. Depending on the visualization, data had to be current up to the minute, hour, day, month, or season.

Visualizations include data from all over Barcelona, including:

• Wave height, water temperature, and wind speed in the Mediterranean Sea
• Flight and boat departure and arrival data
• AQI - pollutants in the air in real time
• Temperature data, then vs now
• Overhead satellite positions
• Seasonal pollen trends

Each piece of data needed to be updated at different frequencies and had different uses for the front-end installation. I built a system using Django as the backend framework, Celery as the scheduling daemon, PostgreSQL database, and Django Rest Framework for the api. I also built a frontend to monitor the health of each 3rd party API resource.