o show its support for the arts at the Art Cologne show, Deutsche Bank AG called on industrial designer Karim Rashid and Uniplan GmbH & Co. KG to create a lounge-like exhibit for the Frankfurt, Germany-based company that was as much a work of art as the Mona Lisa.

What the New York-based Rashid and Cologne, Germany-headquartered Uniplan created was to the typical booth what Picasso is to paint by numbers. Based mostly on 1970s interior design, the 2,769-square-foot exhibit was dipped in a fondue of geometric patterns, day-glo colors, and shiny surfaces. To enter, guests stepped across a keyhole-shaped portal in a wallpapered exterior imprinted with drawings of twisting, turning, ribbon-like shapes that seemed ready to spring off the wall like oversized Slinkys.

Attendees emerged in a gallery, where the company displayed the “Wintergarden” prints by English artist Marc Quinn, known for his solid-gold, life-size statue of super model Kate Moss. The artist’s hyper-realistic pictures blended with the room’s backlit, ivory-colored, acrylic floor tiles etched with curlicues like those from a 1960s Spirograph toy. After eyeballing the art, attendees crossed through oblong portals that connected the exhibit’s four main areas. To the left of the gallery was the meeting room, with walls overlaid in smiley-face-yellow swirls on a sapphire background, and sofas in the avocado shade popular when Nixon was president.

To the right of the gallery was the hospitality bar, its walls covered with twirls of crisp white lines on a maraschino-cherry-red background. On the glowing white floor stood a bar constructed of reflective acrylic glass, its sides the shade of Key limes, where guests relaxed on stools of white polypropylene and marveled at the surreal scenario. The one-of-a-kind exhibit just goes to show: Sometimes the best way to display a work of art is to frame it in one. e

Client: Deutsche Bank AG, Frankfurt, Germany
Design: Karim Rashid Inc., New York
Fabrication: Uniplan GmbH & Co. KG, Cologne, Germany
Size: 39-by-71 feet (2,769 square feet)
Estimated Cost: $750,000
Estimated Cost/Square Foot: $271