HORCH ENGINE
INTERACTIVE MUSEUM MODEL

The Challenge

Together with OE-Konzept, an interactive installation was created for the Audi museum mobile — one that lets museum visitors virtually disassemble a historical asymmetric Horch engine component by component on an interactive panel, and reassemble it again. For this installation, THEAFOX was tasked with delivering the 3D core: a complete, historically accurate reconstruction of the engine, built from scratch and engineered for interactive use.

What made this project exceptionally demanding was the complete absence of technical documentation. No blueprints, no CAD data, no engineering drawings existed for this engine — that was precisely the challenge. The entire reconstruction had to be achieved purely from photographs: images of surviving engines, close-up shots of individual components, and reference material gathered from historical sources. And the result had to be not just visually accurate, but functionally precise — every component engineered to fit together exactly as it would in the real engine, and to work correctly in animation.

Our Approach

Under the direction of Pavel Zoch, the entire engine was reconstructed from scratch through a process of careful reverse engineering — working exclusively from photographic reference. Each component was studied, interpreted, and modeled individually, with the spatial relationships and mechanical tolerances required for the interactive disassembly mechanic to function correctly.

The challenge was twofold: achieving historical accuracy in the geometry while simultaneously building every part as a fully animation-ready asset. Static precision alone was not enough — each component had to move, seat, and separate correctly within the interactive experience. This demanded a level of engineering thinking that goes far beyond typical visualization work, pushing the boundaries between creative 3D craft and functional mechanical reconstruction.

The Result

A fully realized 3D engine model — historically faithful, technically precise, and built to power a live interactive exhibition. At the Audi museum mobile, visitors can explore the inner workings of a piece of early automotive engineering by taking it apart and putting it back together, piece by piece.

This was one of the most complex and creatively demanding projects in THEAFOX's portfolio — a project that pushed 3D work to the very boundary between creative visualization and functional engineering.