hat’s the single best exhibit design from the last 20 years? According to voters in EXHIBITOR Magazine’s Readers’ Choice Award competition, it’s Teknion Furniture Systems Ltd.

In conjunction with the 20th Annual Exhibit Design Awards, EXHIBITOR hosted a Readers’ Choice Awards competition on ExhibitorOnline.com, allowing viewers to vote for their favorite exhibit out of 19 previous Exhibit Design Awards winners. More than 1,000 viewers took part in the polling, which was conducted from Sept. 15, 2005, to Jan. 25, 2006. A one-vote-per-viewer limit was imposed to prevent people from voting multiple times for the same exhibit.

Teknion, which took home the 2002 EDGE Award (the competition’s top honor for Exhibit Design and Graphic Excellence), received nearly 10 percent of readers’ votes, narrowly beating its nearest competition, Volkswagen of America Inc. With votes spread out over 19 contenders, Teknion was preferred 5 to 1 over the least-favorite exhibit, taking home an impressive title that trumps two decades of competing designs. Below is the original Exhibit Design Awards article featuring the Teknion exhibit, which appeared in the May 2002 issue of EXHIBITOR magazine.

 

The booth's framework helps create the illusion that the designers sliced out an entire floor of an office tower.

Once in a while, the first time’s the charm. Such was the case for Diego Burdi, Paul Filek, and Tom Yip of Burdifilek, a Toronto design firm specializing in retail and corporate environments. Not only were they first-time entrants in our competition, they were also first-time booth designers. That’s right, top honors for 2002 went to a group of rookie exhibit designers.

Teknion Furniture Systems Ltd., a Toronto office-furniture manufacturer, needed something dramatic to debut its new furniture line, XM, in September 2001 at Canada’s premier interior-design show, the International Interior Design Exposition/NeoCon Canada. Based on Burdifilek’s reputation for creating striking retail and hospitality environments, Teknion invited the eight-year-old firm to submit an exhibit proposal for the Toronto show. When Burdifilek won the contract, the group’s first thought was, “Well, now we really have to make this work,” says Diego Burdi.

The exhibit did far more than work. Judges crowned it with the industry’s highest honor, the EDGE (for Exhibit Design and Graphic Excellence).

The winning design was born during a late-night brainstorming session. After the team torched roughly 25 ideas, genius appeared out of the sky, according to Burdi. “Looking out of the window at an office tower, I said, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to build something that looked like we were taking a slice out of an office building — one floor of office furniture from a real environment?”

The resulting 60-by-60-foot booth soaring roughly 40-feet tall wasn’t just cool, it was stunning. The tower illusion was created by a suspended black-and-white box-like structure. White vinyl mesh formed the inner white box, which was partially enclosed by an outer layer of black nylon scrim. The “slice” of office life was simply Teknion furniture, including the raised flooring system, chairs, and wall partitions.

Within the overhead tower, vertical rows of fluorescent lights recreated the view of a street-level observer. Red glass walls enclosed the exhibit’s VIP lounge.

While judges praised the straight lines and striking colors as “clean” and “inviting,” they felt “understatement” was the exhibit’s shining glory. As one judge put it, “Every other exhibit we saw with ‘stuff’ overhead either used a goofy object or enough logos to gag somebody. This one claimed the volume overhead, yet very quietly put the logo center stage.”

Hat’s off to an exhibit that’s stark, simple, and sensuous — like a drop of fine red wine on a white-linen tablecloth. Not bad for beginners.

By Linda Armstrong, senior writer.