Video for discussion. https://youtu.be/3jOZ92-2h2k
Along the lines of interactive SVG visualisation, I’ve dabbled in https://d3js.org/, which was honestly a little fiddly but unbelievably powerful in terms of reactive SVG DOM manipulation.
Immediately when seeing the spatial visualisation, I thought of a force-directed graph. I’m pretty sure it would be possible to use a demo like that as a starting point and have individual, specific nodes appear in a prescribed coordinate arrangement relative to each other, with whatever node types indicating maybe a hierarchy of connections or something.
Much easier said than done, I’m sure 
Thanks, yes d3js is a lot more complicated and I would consider overkill. I think a force directed graph might be one of the ways to go, however taxonomy and organization will be a lot of work. https://graphcommons.com/ have done simular concepts with different “objects/data” .
some other quick examples of spatial ui
http://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/