Ayush Gupta’s Living Museum replaces a conventional exhibit grid with a walkable 3D environment: exhibit records managed in Sanity become objects visitors can explore in Three.js. Gupta’s account is a project build retrospective, not a usability study, so it explains how the experience was assembled but does not establish that a 3D museum works better for visitors than a catalog.
What is The Living Museum?
In his October 1, 2026, DEV Community article, Gupta describes a digital museum built around a question: “Why are digital museums still designed like e-commerce catalogs?” Rather than arranging exhibits as a flat grid, the project places them in a navigable environment. Gupta’s design premise is captured by another question: “What if structured content had physical geography and biological vitality?”
The experience is divided into four sequential chambers: inventions, art, history, and future. Visitors can move with WASD keys or an on-screen directional pad, select exhibits to inspect provenance and telemetry, switch between daylight and night lighting, and jump to another chamber.
How content and the 3D environment fit together
Sanity is the content-management layer in Gupta’s account, but exhibit records hold more than text and images. They include lifecycle status, vitality values, and x/y/z coordinates. A curator-facing control room lets curators inspect and edit telemetry. Three.js renders the museum environment, while Gupta describes Next.js as the bridge between the content and interactive interface.
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Gupta reports that the Sanity Studio controlled more than 40 museum records across the four rooms. That is the author’s reported count, not an independently verified dataset total.
Reported technology stack
Gupta names the following technologies as part of the project at publication. These are reported stack details, not confirmation of the versions or dependencies currently deployed.
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| Role | Technology |
|---|---|
| Web framework and interface | Next.js 16 and React 19 |
| Language | TypeScript |
| 3D rendering | Three.js |
| Content management | Sanity Content Lake and Sanity Studio |
| Styling | Tailwind CSS |
| Icons | Lucide Icons |
What made the build difficult?
Gupta recounts a set of practical problems encountered while building the experience. The account does not provide independently reproduced tests, but the issues illustrate the kinds of work involved in combining a content system with a navigable 3D scene.
- AI-generated lighting was positioned incorrectly, requiring adjustments to the scene.
- A camera reset used an undefined target.
- Collision meshes appeared as visible blocks rather than remaining hidden scene geometry.
- The project separated scene mathematics and camera bounds from React overlays to keep rendering logic distinct from interface elements.
- Mobile visitors needed touch controls in addition to keyboard navigation.
- The production build surfaced TypeScript errors.
- The embedded Studio needed a CORS configuration.
What the project demonstrates—and what it does not
The Living Museum is an example of treating content records as spatial objects rather than entries in a conventional list or grid. That approach creates useful design questions: whether visitors benefit from moving through themed rooms, how spatial metadata should be curated, and how keyboard and touch navigation should coexist.
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- SUPPORT FOR MYOPIA USERS: The reasonable design of the optical lens and the body can pre-vent fatigue and sleepiness, and can support the use of myopia users, reduce deformity and glare to effectively reduce visual fatigue, maintaining 3D reality with a wide field of vision and creating a virtual reality world.
- ADVANCED VR TECHNOLOGY: 360-degree panoramic view, bringing more shocking visual experience and immersive visual impa-ct.Gaming and watching movies with virtual reality headsets work best when your eyes properly align with the screen box. With this device, you can experience the immersive, fun and exciting world of VR, such as 3D movies, skydiving, underwater worlds, panoramic natural scenery, virtual game scenes, etc.
- ADJUSTABLE INTERPUPILLARY DISTANCE: The use of a large lens barrel has a wider field of view, and the interpupillary distance design of the adjustable gear can meet a variety of needs.The pupil distance can be adjusted to get the clearest view.Our optical goggles has the characteristics of an-ti-blue light, effectively protects the eyes, makes the picture clearer, and reduces the feeling of dizziness.
- MORE PORTABLE, MORE COMFORTABLE, MORE LIGHTWEIGHT: Suitable for 4.5-7inch mobile phones, compatible with more types of large-screen mobile phones. VR Headset weighs as light as its concise appearance, it more portable no matter at home or outdoor. A T-shaped headband will fit different head sizes
- PERFECT GIFT FOR KIDS & ADULTS: This premium VR headset is the perfect present for father's day, Halloween, Easter, or Christmas. Compatible with smartphones and other mobile phone devices with a 4.5-7 inch screen to bring you a totally immersive visual 360 degree experience.
It also adds implementation and maintenance considerations that a flat catalog may avoid: camera behavior, collision boundaries, lighting, responsive controls, and the connection between content data and scene geometry. Gupta’s article describes one implementation; it does not compare the two approaches head to head or provide measured evidence that 3D museums improve discovery, engagement, or usability.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Source and scope
The implementation details and reported outcomes above are attributed to Ayush Gupta’s project article, “I Tried to Prompt a 3D Museum Into Existence. Then I Had to Teach Sanity to Remember Life and Death,” published October 1, 2026, on DEV Community. The project account is not an independent audit of the live site or code.
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