Museum & visitor displays
CLIENTWorld Retail Congress
PROJECTAn environmentally-friendly exhibition, Barcelona
The brief
To work with Gensler to create and produce an exhibition space that would stimulate debate, challenge environmental issues within the retail sector and form the centrepiece of the Congress.
The space was to provide a visual metaphor for retailing and sustainability, the overarching theme for WRC ’08, and encourage the world’s biggest retail attendees to question their own environmental credentials.
The work
The display was constructed entirely from cardboard boxes and comprised over 3,000 boxes covering a space of over 15,000 square metres. Cleverly designed to be interchangeable, the boxes flipped after the first day of the Congress to reveal an alternative message that reflected the second day’s topic and re-energised debate.
The corrugated sheets used to construct the boxes were made from a recycylable board manufactured in the UK from FSC materials and a high recycled content that could easily be recycled locally at the end of the Congress. The boxes were designed and produced to be flatpacked in order to reduce the amount of transport needed.
Graphics were printed directly onto corrugated sheets using the very latest Durst 800 flatbed digital UV printing press, the only certified UV ink in the world free of volatile organic compounds (VOC) and holding the Nordic Swan accreditation. The corrugated sheets were then cut and folded on a Zund multifunctional flatbed cutting system.
Results
Innovative design and production techniques combined with careful research and adoption of substrates resulted in a showcase maximising visual impact and achieving the minimum environmental damage.
The exhibition space achieved its goal to create a highly impactful and challenging centrepiece which helped to stimulate debate on the core issues of the Congress. This display won “Best Museum & Exhibition Space at the FX International Interior Design Awards in 2008.
